by Susan Sallis
‘Of course I’m not put out – as you call it – by the allotment! For goodness’ sake, I’m a country girl myself, honey. I’m going to buy a hoe and work alongside you. It’s just that . . . I wanted to fix something back home and I couldn’t. Sorry.’
Lucy thought that probably Margaret would tell her about the one thing she could not ‘fix’ and why she was apologetic about it. But she did not and it was soon forgotten.
That spring of 1962 they worked like the country girls they were, preparing the sandy soil and planting salad vegetables, potatoes, purple sprouting and some very early kidney beans. They walked from Steep Street most mornings and after a week or so Matthew and Mark fell in behind them and spent sunny days in the shade of some ancient gooseberry bushes and damp ones in the warm wooden shed hung with tools, skeins of raffia and bags of flower pots. Margaret had to persuade Tad to join them, but once he had actually caught a field mouse hiding in the potato bag he decided to make regular visits. Their picture appeared in the Cornishman, too small for them to be identified, captioned ‘The Pied Pipers of Truro’. Marvin called them the Cat Women.
It was a lovely spring and brought an influx of visitors, some regulars armed with notebooks and cameras as they walked the wide central aisle of the cathedral and pottered around the quay area or took the ferry down to Falmouth and St Mawes, others more exotic. They were nearly all young people, not all English by any means. A lot of them carried guitars over one shoulder and some had small children in hammock contraptions on their backs. They had a motto and voiced it to anyone who caught their eyes. ‘Peace, man,’ they would say, whether you were man or woman. A few of them had obviously seen the newspaper picture of the two women and their cats and thought they might be twin souls; they picketed the allotment sites and were at the gate when Margaret and Lucy were going home in a hurry to meet the girls from school.
‘Hey!’
Lucy registered the American accent, looked round from checking on the cats and smiled. ‘Hey yourself,’ she responded – just as Margaret so often did.
‘You the ladies with the cats?’
Matthew and Mark and then Tad joined them sideways on, interested as always in new people. They groomed themselves on bleached jeans and brown legs. Lucy’s smile widened. ‘As you see,’ she replied.
Margaret gathered Tad into her arms. ‘We have to go, honey. School’s out in ten minutes.’
Lucy sensed her distrust of these people and looked at them anew. There were two girls and three boys, all bone thin but fit enough apparently; they had long hair over their shoulders, and were carrying sheaves of lilac. There was something very childlike about the five of them, standing there covered in flowers. She had seen them gathered down on the quay when she did her shopping; they had made some kind of camp by the river and if the wind was in the right direction she heard them singing when she put Denny and Barbara to bed. They were clean and they did not beg so why was Margaret so unusually cautious?
The girls were passing them sprays of lilac, glorious thick white blossoms like random clumps of snow. Margaret tried to avoid them but still landed up with two sprays in her trug. Lucy gathered them to her and inhaled the strange but intensely nostalgic fragrance with closed eyes. It took her back, as scents do.
To Devon – of course. It had been lilac time when she started dating Bertie McKinley. But it took her beyond Devon, beyond the happiness of Bertie and then Egg and then Daniel and the girls. It took her through the unhappiness of her mother’s early death. Another time; a time of childhood, a time of real innocence when her mother had taken her out every day, rain or shine, to work on the farm and to look and look and look at every small thing about her and see their vital importance to the enormous whole of the world. Her mother had identified times and seasons by the flowers. ‘Holly time’. ‘Snowdrop time’. ‘Primrose time’. And eventually, every year, lilac time had arrived. With this scent, these prolific flower heads.
Margaret said, ‘Come on, Luce. They’ve cleared off. We’d better put a move on – we’ll have to throw this stuff in the bin.’
‘No!’ Lucy could barely see over the flower heads. ‘No. I’ve got those old cider jars of Daniel’s – we can share the flowers.’
Margaret was astonished. ‘They grow like weeds, honey. If I’d known you liked them so much I could have cut some in my own backyard.’
Their arrival at the school gate caused some amusement; others had been accosted but had shrugged away from the flowers. It seemed that the Flower People had decided today was the day to share their peculiar euphoria.
Lucy led the way into the cool house on Steep Street, fetched half a dozen of Daniel’s old cider jars and let the girls arrange the flowers. Margaret had to admit they were beautiful.
‘I haven’t remembered my early childhood for years. It must have been the scent of the lilac. Once my mother died, life was quite different. No beauty, no wonderful smells.’ Lucy carried the jars into the hall and stood them along the wall all the way to the front door. ‘Ellie and Gus will wonder what has hit them when they come in.’ She looked at Margaret. ‘Why were you so against those children – they were no trouble, were they?’
‘They’re not really children. You see them all the time at home. And no, I guess they’re no trouble, not really. Free love, free speech, that kinda thing. There’s something very attractive about them. They share everything, nobody starves. They sing their songs and write their poems.’ She sighed sharply. ‘Gus thinks it’s all marvellous. But they use a drug, they call it a psychedelic drug. Mostly it’s all right. But some of them . . .’ She bit her lip and looked towards the kitchen, where Barbara and Denny were still dealing with the lilac. ‘We’ve got friends in San Francisco. One of their boys, just sixteen, went to one of the concerts and must have taken a pill. Thought he could fly and he tried it. Off the Golden Gate.’
‘He . . . died?’
‘Yeah. We didn’t tell Gus. I think we should but Marvin says no.’
‘Oh. Dear Lord. This happened at Easter – when you were home?’
Margaret nodded. ‘We’re pretty raw about it. Thought we were coming back here to the sort of simplicity that you and me have got, Luce. Then I see these kids wandering around Cornwall – of all places – in all weathers, obviously taking some drug or other because they’re not living in this world, that’s for sure.’
She stopped speaking because Ellie and Gus came through the front door into the hall and stopped in amazement as they saw and smelled the bower of lilacs.
Gus was delighted. ‘Ma! You’ve become a Flower Person!’
Ellie closed her eyes. ‘This is how heaven will smell.’
‘We did it – we did it!’ Barbara and Denny erupted from the kitchen. Barbara said, ‘Mum got all Daddy’s old cider jars and filled them with water and I cut the ends off like what she showed me and Denny put them in.’ The older girls praised them extravagantly and Margaret looked helplessly at Lucy and shrugged.
That night, Matthew Hobson phoned Lucy. He sounded odd. Once when Daniel had rescued an amateur diver whose airline had blocked, she had heard that sort of voice. Then it could have been due to an attack of the bends; but also from inhaling helium.
He said, ‘Lucy. Sorry to bother you. Thought you should know. Harry has not come home for two nights.’ He gave a small giggle. ‘He’s not tied to me, of course, but he hasn’t taken his stuff so he is expecting to be back.’
‘You think he will come here?’ The girls were in bed and Lucy was getting ready to go upstairs herself. She glanced at the door to check both locks.
‘Possibly. Though I would think he would have arrived by now.’
‘Not if he was walking.’
‘Well . . . he left here on Wednesday morning and it’s Friday now.’
Lucy felt her heart lift. She had not realized she was anxious for Harry. ‘In that case it could be that he has gone home. Oh, I do hope so.’
‘Yes . . . he has become part of this Flower
Power thing. I don’t know whether you have any of their groups in Truro. There’s a large contingent camping just beyond the cove.’
‘The cove?’ The usual thing happened to her heart; it must actually skip a beat, she thought, just like the novelists and poets told you.
‘They walk across the bay at low tide and make camp fires in the dunes beyond the towans. No harm in them, not really. They could be a danger to themselves and . . . perhaps . . . Harry Membury.’
‘How? In what way?’
‘He is caught up with some of their ideology. Freedom in all things. And he’s been eating some fungi stuff which he says heightens his perception. It’s the air down here, well known for being exceptionally clear. Artists can’t keep away . . .’
She looked along the hallway at the lilac, almost fluorescent in the glow from the street lamp streaming through the door light. She nodded, understanding.
‘Is it dangerous?’ she asked.
‘It depends. Doc Carthew does not care for it. But then he’s quite narrow-minded when it comes to looking after the human body.’
‘Yes. So you’re not worried about Mr Membury?’
‘Oh for goodness’ sake, Lucy, call him Harry, not Mr Membury! This is one of the good things about the Flower People, their complete informality. Harry told me that they rename themselves in a ritual baptism in the sea. One of the girls is called Sunrise and another Sunset.’ He paused and then said in a more controlled voice, ‘I’m not worried for you. I don’t think he will ever harm a hair of your head. But I do worry about him if he’s thrown up his job and gone on the road with some of these people. I thought he was doing rather well.’ He cleared his throat and said, ‘It would be excellent if he has gone back to his family, of course. Thought I’d better put you in the picture.’ He put down his receiver and Lucy was left holding hers for a moment of uncertainty. He had not asked after the girls. And he had not mentioned the fact that it was nearly two years since the sea had taken Egg.
The next day was Saturday and she and Margaret took their children to swim in the pool. ‘I quite thought I would be driving you to your wonderful towans this summer,’ Margaret mourned as they ate lunch in the restaurant. ‘Why don’t you all go over and see that lovely vicar of yours while we’re in the States?’
Lucy felt surprised but not shocked. She had assumed that she would never go back to Hayle, just as she had never gone back to Devon. It had been her mother’s belief that there was ‘no going back’. She had stated it sadly but then hugged Lucy and added, ‘Why would I want to go back when I’ve got you?’ But this was different. She would be visiting her local priest, tending her son’s grave . . .
She said, ‘We could do.’ She looked at Ellie, who nodded enthusiastically. Barbara said, ‘Can we take Matthew and Mark?’ And when their mother shook her head the younger girls shook theirs back.
Margaret said, ‘Listen. We don’t go back home till next week. You two bring the cats and come up to us for the day tomorrow. Let Ellie and Mom go see the vicar. How would that be?’
The girls clapped their hands. It was, as Margaret said, fixed.
Lucy telephoned Matthew Hobson. There was no news of Harry – she remembered to call him Harry – and the doc had been round and told Matthew that both he and his lodger had probably been on a diet of magic mushrooms for the past few weeks and were unfit for duty. ‘It did not occur to me that I was eating the blessed things, but, of course, as Harry was cooking supper I was having what he was having. Do I sound strange to you, Lucy?’
‘No, but your voice was different last night. Sort of . . . hysterical.’ She had never spoken to a priest so familiarly before. She bit her lip and added, ‘Sorry, reverend.’
‘Please call me Matthew. I was – and am – quite worried about Harry. I telephoned Farmer Roach this morning and there was no reply. I drove over immediately and the cows were going crazy to be milked. I let the Godolphin cowman know that there’s no one around. He told me that when Roach starts drinking he can disappear for days at a time. He’ll see to the cattle. He hadn’t seen Harry for a week but that’s not unusual.’
Lucy said, ‘Did you say Farmer Roach?’
‘Yes.’ There was a pause then Matthew said, ‘Lucy. I’m sorry. Josh told me that Roach is your father. I had forgotten.’ He tried to laugh. ‘Those mushrooms really are magic.’
‘Yes.’ Lucy stared at the lilacs. ‘Ellie and me are coming over on the bus tomorrow. We were thinking of coming to Matins but perhaps Ellie can do that while I go out to the farm.’
‘We’ll all go. I’ll drive us. I’ve got a different car and it hardly ever breaks down. I’ll fetch you after the early Eucharist and we’ll go straight there.’
Lucy said carefully, ‘I’d rather go alone.’
Another pause. Matthew said, ‘All right.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Will it be all right, Lucy? Will you be all right? I understand that your father can become violent . . . on occasion.’
‘I will be all right, Matthew.’
She put the phone down and stood very still in the lamp-lit hall. Then she went into the kitchen and opened the dresser drawer where she kept bits of string and plastic bags; she took a key from the muddle and pocketed it. Then she packed bread and cheese and a bottle of water. And the carving knife.
Thirteen
GUSSIE CAME DOWN for Barbara, Denny and the cats at eight o’clock the next morning. The weather had changed and there was a nasty little wind blowing down Steep Street. Already the piercing whiteness of the lilacs in the hall was dimmed; one enormous fondant was brown on the edges. Lucy and Ellie, standing on the step to wave to the girls as if they were off to America, were both conscious of the weather, as they always had been when they lived on the towans.
They went down to the quay and caught the early bus to Penzance; it wound its way through all the villages en route: Redruth, a loop to Portreath and Camborne. They got off on the edge of Connor Downs before it reached Hayle; from there they could walk across to the first of the sand dunes and drop down to the towans and St Petroc’s.
They stood above the church and the sea and looked down to where Pardoe Cottage had nested in the scrubby land. It had gone. The garden had gone. The beans and the arthritic apple trees in the orchard were all part of the sandy landscape. Where the gate opened on to the lane down to the beach, a large digger sat waiting for the morning and its operator. They were levelling an enormous area bounded by the phone box, the church, and the cluster of cottages that included Chippy’s workshop, then the single street with its offshoots which comprised the hamlet. Already a new shop had opened and though it was Sunday its front was bedecked with beach shoes, buckets and spades and fishing nets.
‘Oh Ma . . .’ Ellie took Lucy’s arm, distressed. ‘It’s as if we never were here. Daddy’s lovely bathroom . . . the bean plot . . . We let them kill our home!’
Lucy put her arms around her daughter and held her tightly, taking as well as giving comfort. Ellie understood that and responded quickly. ‘It wasn’t us, was it? Not really. Chippy would have turned us out and sold the cottage anyway.’
Lucy nodded against Ellie’s dark hair. She dared not speak. It was nobody’s fault. Even if Egg had been with them, he could not have saved Daniel’s cottage.
After a moment they started to walk down towards the church. Matthew came to meet them, holding out his arms in welcome.
‘Ten o’clock. Time for a cup of tea before Matins. Ah . . . Ellie. Dear girl. Don’t cry . . . I do understand how you feel. Your home razed to the ground. But as long as I am in the rectory you still have a home at the towans.’ He looked at Lucy. ‘I mean that, Lucy. You will always be welcome here.’
She nodded, still unable to speak. They walked slowly back to the rectory, through the churchyard with its leaning stones and the old iron gate that squealed so horribly and into the chilly shelter of the house.
Matthew took them straight through to the kitchen, lit the gas oven and left the door open as he h
ad seen her do, then put the kettle on the hob. A line of socks hung across the window. Towels were draped over the rack above the cooker. He apologized.
‘I miss Harry in more ways than one,’ he admitted. ‘He kept the fire going in the living room, well damped down but it warmed the house. He brought food in too.’ He laughed. ‘I don’t think either of us realized that the mushrooms were hallucinogenic.’ He shook his head. ‘I think I’ve got them out of my system now – do I sound normal?’
Ellie looked more cheerful. ‘Some of the Flower People who are camped outside Truro are high all the time on them. You don’t sound like them so you must be all right.’
‘High?’ Lucy asked, surprised because Ellie spoke of the Flower People so casually, so familiarly.
‘It’s how they describe it, Ma. It means they are transcendent – above all normal constraints and what-have-you. Gussie explained it all – it happened in America first so she’s the expert.’
Matthew poured tea and produced a packet of biscuits. ‘It worries our good doctor. People do strange and dangerous things under the influence of drugs.’
Ellie sipped. ‘What sort of things?’
‘Well, Carthew had heard of a case at Hell’s Mouth. Someone thought they could fly . . . luckily they went into the sea and the inshore boat went out and got them.’
Ellie nodded seriously. ‘That happened to someone Gus knows.’
It was another shock for Lucy. Margaret thought she and Marvin had shielded Gus from the awful tragedy that had befallen their friends in San Francisco, but Gus must know for Ellie to know. Lucy said fearfully, ‘Do you think Harry Membury has done something stupid?’
‘I have no idea.’ Matthew looked from one to the other. ‘He is caught up with the young people who are camped in the dunes and could well have thrown in his lot with them. The farmhouse is properly locked up but no one was there. Nor in the sheds. No sign of him. And your father has gone too, Lucy.’