A Gull on the Roof

by Derek Tangye

  Gregory has one leg, the other presumably lost long ago in a trap; and because the source of his strength is unbalanced he has become barrel-chested like a plump duck. He is the easiest to recognise when in flight because his chest seems to protrude like the front cone of an aircraft. He is a lonely gull. I have often seen him attacked by others and driven twisting and turning across the moorland to the sea; and there was one occasion when he was caught unawares on the roof and bullied screaming off it so that he fell in the garden. Hubert was the villain and I rushed out and stood by, until Gregory had recovered sufficiently to hop away to the path and take flight. Usually he calls about an hour before dusk but if someone else is still on the roof I see him waiting and watching in a field across the valley, a white speck against the soil. Then, when the roof is bare, he is with us.

  I am wondering now whether I should not have written about Gregory in the past tense. We have not seen him for months. He has been absent before now for several weeks on end, usually in the summer, and we have mocked him on his return. ‘You’ve been cadging from the visitors,’ we have accused him, ‘you’ve been hopping on the beach luring them to say “we must feed that poor bird with one leg”.’ But he has never been away for so long and we are worried. Has a fox caught him as he hopped in a field? Or has his own kind swooped and battered him into the sea?

  I wonder, too, whether Hubert is nearing the end of his reign as king of the roof; age becomes driftwood wherever it may be. Once he had only to bellow a screeching warning for any gull on the roof to flee at his approach. But the other day I watched him being himself attacked, pounced upon by a newcomer as he was warming himself on the chimney; and the newcomer, a brash, bossy gull who, without being friendly, greedily demands his food, unbalanced poor Hubert in such a manner that he fell like an untidy parachute to the grass below.

  Hubert is fussy. He dislikes shop bread, tosses it in disgust in the air if he is given it, and insists instead on Jeannie’s home-made variety. He loves cheese, but his favourite dish is bacon rinds. ‘Let me know when Hubert arrives,’ Jeannie will say, ‘I’ve got bacon rinds for him today.’ In wintry weather his visits are brief, long enough to have a meal, then he flies majestically away towards the sea, sloping his flight down the valley to the rocks below the cliffs which are his home. In normal weather he may stay with us for most of the day, announcing his arrival with a squeak; then he will squat on the wide rugged stones of the chimney as if on a nest, or he will stand looking bored and disconsolate on the ridge of the roof, or walk to and fro along it like a sentry on a parapet. He observes us. We are always aware of his scrutiny.

  In the beginning Monty was irritated rather than jealous of him. Monty would doze in the garden, look up when Hubert started to cry, then curl his upper lip in a soundless snarl. Or if we were having breakfast on the white seat below the cottage and Hubert was strutting within throwing distance of a piece of toast, Monty would lie and stare; then, as if he thought some gesture of defiance were required on his part, he would gently growl like a dog. In time they became friendly enough to ignore each other.

  Monty was indifferent to birds and we were never made anxious by the sight of him stalking. He once caught a wren but it was hardly his fault. He was lying somnolent on the grass by the apple tree while a covey of baby wrens flew around him, teasing him as if they were flies and he a tired old horse. I saw him flick his tail in impatience, then pounce, and a wren was in his mouth; but his actions were so gentle that when I rushed to the rescue, shouting at him, he let it go and it flew away unharmed.

  He had other temptations but there was a placid quality in his nature that helped him to ignore them. We had, for instance, the usual company of tomtits, bluetits, dunnocks, buntings and sparrows flitting about the garden in expectation of crumbs, and he took no notice of any of them; but in particular we had Charlie the chaffinch and Tim the robin.

  Charlie attached himself to us soon after the arrival of Hubert, and like Tim he is still with us. He is a bird with a dual character; that of the spring and summer when he is resplendent in plumage of slate-blue, pink, chestnut, black and white wings and tail, is boastful and demanding; that of the winter when his feathers have the drabness of faded curtains is apologetic, as if surprised he was worthy of any attention. In spring and summer his call is as loud as a trumpet, in winter it is that of a squeak. He has an endearing personality. We may be anywhere in the environment of Minack and suddenly find him hopping about beside us or flitting in the trees as we walk through the wood. We seldom see him any distance from the cottage though once I found him on the edge of the Pentewan meadows. I said: ‘Hello Charlie, what are you doing here?’ in the tone of voice that might have greeted a friend I thought was in London. Then, when I started back to the cottage, he came with me.

  There was one winter, however, when he disappeared for four or five months and we sadly concluded he was dead. But one March morning when Jeannie was in the chicken run which we had moved to a clearing in the wood, she suddenly heard ‘cheep, cheep’ from a branch above her head. It was Charlie; and she rushed back to the cottage to tell me. ‘Charlie’s back!’ she said excitedly, ‘I must get him a biscuit!’ And by that time Charlie had followed her and was sitting on the bird-table cheeping away like a dog barking a welcome. Where had he been? In the autumn hordes of migrating chaffinches sweep along the coast past Minack on the way to Southern Ireland, so perhaps Charlie went along with a group. It does not seem the trip was a success. He has never gone away for the winter again.

  Charlie is a diffident character compared with Tim. Charlie never comes inside the cottage whereas Tim will perch on the back of a chair and sing us a song. Charlie, when we are bunching flowers, will cheep on the doorstep of the flower house while Tim is inside hopping about on the shelves. Charlie shies away if you put out a hand, Tim will stand on my outstretched palm until my arm aches.

  One November, Tim, like Charlie, disappeared. Tim’s territory consisted of the cottage, about forty yards of the lane beyond Monty’s Leap, and a field bordering it. One morning a few days after we had noticed Tim’s disappearance we observed another robin, a nervous robin, flying about the same territory. Robins, of course, compete with each other for desirable territories, so we looked at this robin and wondered whether he had driven Tim away or moved into the territory because Tim was dead. We did not look with favour; for whatever had happened was distressing.

  It was a fortnight later that we saw Tim again. We were strolling along a cliff path a half-mile from the cottage when suddenly, perched on a twig of quickthorn, I saw Tim. There was no mistaking him. He was perched with his feathers fluffed out, motionless, watching us. ‘Tim!’ Jeannie said with delight, ‘what are you doing here?’ I had a few crumbs in my pocket which I held out on the palm of my hand. A second later I felt the touch of his legs, as if two matchsticks were standing upright.

  The following day we returned to the same place. There was no Tim. We pushed our way through the brush calling his name, walking in ever widening circles. At Minack he always used to answer his name. We would stroll a few steps down the lane calling, ‘Tim!’ – and a few moments later he would be with us. But this time there was no sign of him, nor the next day, nor the day after. ‘Well,’ I said to Jeannie, ‘I hope that hawk which has been around hasn’t had him.’ Jeannie did not like the casual way I spoke. Tim was as much a friend as any human could be.

  You can, of course, always win the attention of birds by throwing them crumbs, and you reap the pleasant reward of watching them; but it is when an individual bird enters the realm of companionship that the soul is surprised by a gossamer emotion of affection. Tim was not greedy. He did not call on us just because he was hungry. I have seen him time and time again flutter at the window of the flower house, then, when we have let him in, mooch around for a couple of hours among the jars full of flowers, warble a little, perch on a bloom with feathers fluffed out watching us at work.

  ‘Where’s Tim?’ I would ask Je
annie.

  ‘He was up on the top shelf among the King Alfreds a moment ago.’

  We missed him when February came and daffodils began filling the flower house again. We would be silently bunching when one of us would break the silence; ‘I wonder what did happen to Tim?’ We knew we would never see him again.

  But we were wrong. One afternoon in the last week of February we had gone into the cottage for tea and left the door of the flower house open. Twenty minutes later we returned and quietly continued to bunch. You get in a daze doing the job, picking the daffodils out of the jars, building them three at a time into a bunch, stacking the bunches into galvanised pails where they will stay overnight before they are packed. Your hands move automatically. You only pause to count the number you have done. I had turned to pick out three blooms for the first layer of a bunch when I happened to look up at the beam which crossed the house.

  ‘Jeannie!’ I said, ‘look on the beam!’

  Gazing down at us, serenely confident, head on one side and in best spring plumage, was Tim.

  14

  Hubert up there on the roof looks down on greenhouses now at Minack. First a small one thirty feet long and twelve feet wide; then another, one hundred feet long and twenty-two feet wide; then two mobiles, dutch light type glasshouses which are pushed on rails covering two sites and two separate crops in a year, each seventy feet long and eighteen feet wide; and two more the same length but twenty feet wide.

  We now work some of the land which John used to have, for John has left the district to go to a farm of his own. Walter and Jack have taken his place; and these two, and Bill who has the other farm which pivots from the collection of buildings, are neighbours who are always ready to help.

  We have changed our pattern of growing. Our hands no longer grovel after potatoes in the soil, and we have returned Pentewan to its owner. We have learnt to hate potatoes. Once they promised to be the crop of our prosperity, and instead they have absorbed money, patience and countless aching hours of our labour. ‘Once in four years you can expect a bumper harvest,’ said the old man with the piping voice when we took over Pentewan. We waited and it never came.

  The weather was too dry or too cold or too windy. The weather was always exceptional. ‘Never known an April so dry’ – and the potatoes, instead of swelling, would remain the size of golf balls. ‘Never known such bad weather in February’ – and instead of getting on with our planting we had to wait, knowing the farmers in their fields would catch us up. ‘Never known a spring so cold’ . . . Every year the old men in the pubs would drag out from their memories their gloomy comparisons. At first it was comforting to know the season was exceptional, then irritating, then a threat to enthusiasm.

  As the cost of production has risen so have the prices fallen. Foreign potatoes flood the markets during the period when those of the Cornish cliff used to reign by themselves. Palates are jaded, and size rather than flavour is the arbiter of purchase. The Cornish cliff new potato is no longer a desirable delicacy; the shovels in the tiny meadows beside the sea, the tedious walks up the cliffs with a chip in each hand, the neatly packed chips being loaded at Penzance station . . . these are the actions of another age. Thus along with the remarks about exceptional weather, there are those about exceptional prices. ‘Down to £30 already? I’ve never known anything like it.’

  We were the first to break with tradition. Others have followed us, and Joe no longer haunts the cliffs that have known him for seventeen years. It is sad when hopes are slowly battered, and events burrow reality into your mind. It is sad, even, when the cause is the humble potato.

  Flowers, tomatoes and lettuces are the crops we grow at Minack. We plant every year an acre of winter flowering wallflowers, one hundred thousand anemone corms, a half-acre of calendulas and four thousand violet plants. We have fifteen tons of daffodil bulbs. The greenhouses have forget-me-nots, freesias, iris, polyanthus and stocks during the winter; and three thousand tomato plants during the summer. We aim to sell forty thousand lettuces between April and October.

  Such is the blueprint of our annual output. Unfortunately, a market garden for the most part is like a factory with workshops open to the sky. The sky is the ceiling. There are production problems as in a factory, selling problems as in any business; but however clever you may be in overcoming these, it is always the weather which dictates your prosperity. Thus I may pay staff for several months of preparatory labour – preparing land, planting, weeding – but lose everything in a hard frost, a few gales, or as in the case of some crops, a period of wet muggy weather.

  Or it may be a hot spell at the wrong time which has hit us. An excessively warm March defeated our Wedgewood iris gamble. The thirty-six thousand which we had planted in one of the greenhouses were scheduled to be marketed before the outside Wedgewood in the Channel Islands came into bloom. But a March resembling midsummer brought both indoor and outdoor iris into the markets together, deluging the salesmen and bringing despair to the growers. ‘Well,’ I said to Jeannie, ‘we’ll never grow iris again.’ But we did. The best course a grower can take is to follow one year’s bad market with the same crop the next.

  Frost, gales, muggy weather, unseasonable heatwaves . . . sometimes Jeannie and I wonder whether we should ever expect normality. Of these frost is the least of our worries, for it is very seldom indeed that there is a persistent hard frost in West Cornwall. Gales, however, will chase us to the end of our days though sometimes they seem to take a rest and leave us in comparative peace. They blow but lack viciousness, or they launch an attack at a time when there are no crops to harm. Such a period lulls us into forgetfulness, and we deceive ourselves into thinking that optimism is a substitute for realism; and so we plant a crop in a meadow which is doomed as soon as a frenzied gale blows again.

  The first time we grew anemones in any great number was following a winter that was as gentle as a continuous spring, when our flowers had bloomed in steady profusion and we were happy in the confidence born of success. So confident indeed that we proceeded to act as if gales were no longer an enemy.

  We decided that the Dairyman’s Meadow at Pentewan would be ideal for the anemone crop, and that another meadow over there would be suitable for the cloches we had recently bought. The Dairyman’s meadow, so called because the use of it was once the perk of the man who looked after the cows on the farm, sloped south, dipping downwards from a high bank to the crest of the cliff. The other meadow, known as the thirty lace meadow because of its size, was more exposed, but being flat it was exactly what we required for the cloches. We were going to use them as a cover for winter-growing lettuces.

  By October the anemones were in full bloom, long stems and brilliant colours; and we congratulated ourselves on our good fortune. ‘There you are,’ I said to Jeannie, ‘it just proves we do sometimes know more than the old hands.’ For the old hands, in the person of Joe, had warned us that nobody had ever succeeded in growing anemones on the cliff.

  That year we had advertised a private box service, sending flowers direct to the home; and the anemones proved such a success that time and again they were specially asked for in repeat orders. We were particularly delighted when one lady ordered twenty dozen . . . to decorate a house for a wedding reception; and she carefully instructed us to be certain they arrived the day before, December the first.

  We never sent them, nor did we send any more anemones away that season. The gales had returned, blasting away the illusions that we could grow anemones on the cliff. A monster had roared in from the sea during the night of November the twenty-ninth, and when we reached the meadow in the morning it was as if a khaki-coloured carpet had been spread across it. Not an anemone, not a green leaf was to be seen. The meadow was a desert.

  It was another monster, three months later, that sent the cloches skidding across the thirty lace meadow. Never before or since have I known a gale which blew so hard as on that March morning, so hard that I had to crawl on my hands and knees in order to make
any progress against it. Glass seemed to be flying like swallows skimming the cliff, and there was nothing for me to do except watch and curse and wait.

  And as I waited, sheltered a little by a hedge, I suddenly saw Jeannie fighting her way towards me. It was her birthday and I was miserable that it should have begun so disastrously. There was no reason why she should have joined me. I had not asked her nor expected her. She was joining me because it was in her nature that trouble should be shared.

  ‘Here,’ she said as she reached me, ‘I’ve brought you a flask of tea . . . I thought you might need it.’ I most certainly did. ‘And I’ve put Glucose in it to help you keep warm.’ I poured out a cup, spilling some of it in the wind, then took a gulp. It was awful. It tasted like quince. ‘You’ve poisoned me, Jeannie!’ I shouted jokingly into the gale, ‘what on earth did you put in it?’

  When we returned to the cottage we found the lid was firmly pressed down on the Glucose tin; that of the Epsom salts lay loose on the table.

  Gales, then, will always be our enemy, but they are an enemy that attacks without guile; and it is easier to deal with a man who boasts his hate rather than with one who hides it. Muggy weather, warm wet sticky sea fog that covers the fields like a dirty stream, achieves its destruction by stealth.

  It creeps into the greenhouses, sponging the tomato plants with botrytis and mildew, or blearing the freesias with tiny brown smudges making them useless for sale. Outside, it browns the tips of the anemone blooms, and sometimes it does this so slyly that the damage is revealed only after the flowers have been picked and have remained in their jars overnight.

  But it is at daffodil time that muggy weather can gain its great victories. A gale can beat at a wall but on the other side you can rest in its shelter. Muggy weather gives no chance of such rest. It envelops the daffodils in a damp cocoon and brushes the petals, either in bud or in bloom, with the smear of its evil. There is no defence. You have to put up your hands in surrender.