A Drake at the Door (23 page)

Half an hour later I called into the flower-house where she was having her lunch. She was sitting with Lama on her lap, the photograph propped against a jam jar beside her, a sandwich in one hand, the letter in the other.

I did not have to ask her whether she was pleased. Nor did she have to say anything. She had the smile of the happiest girl in the world.

Shelagh and Bingo outside her caravan

Alan Herbert, during his stay, played an absurd game with Jane and Shelagh when they arrived in the morning. He pretended to take it seriously, and they did too. The game as to check their punctuality not by the normal means of a watch, but by two sundials which he had painstakingly and accurately created.

He called them the Minack Sundials; and one was made from a cocktail tray, the other from the top of a small white table the legs of which he had sawn off.

They had, of course, technical names. The cocktail tray was a Horizontal Sundial, and was allocated to Shelagh because its site was on the arm of the white garden seat which she passed when she arrived in the morning. The table top was an Equatorial Sundial, and so placed that Jane came face to face with it as soon as she jumped over the hedge from her hurried journey across the fields.

I have no idea how A.P.H. made his calculations, but they continued over a period of days and whatever was happening, wherever we might be, we always had to hurry back to the sundials at one o’clock. The purpose was to compare the shadow on the dial he had drawn with the pips of the Greenwich time signal. When at last he was satisfied that accuracy had been assured, he issued the Minack Sundial Instructions; a copy for Jane, a copy for Shelagh.

Unfortunately as his handwriting is very difficult to decipher without the help of a magnifying glass, the girls looked at the instructions in wonderment but without comprehension.

‘The Cocktail Tray Sundial,’ Shelagh could have read, ‘should be dead level, but is warped already.’

‘The Table Top Sundial,’ Jane may have seen, ‘has hour spaces which should be exactly equal . . . but one or two, I fear, are not.’

Jane was also informed in these instructions, ‘the dial, believe it or not, is parallel with the Equator which will, I am sure, be a great source of satisfaction.’

Neat diagrams accompanied the instructions and there was an extra page on which was listed the Equation of Time. This was to prove confusing in judging the girls’ punctuality because, as sundial owners will know, dials do not coincide with the clock. In August the dial can be as much as six minutes ahead, and in September nine minutes behind. So when the girls arrived for work it was not just a question of looking at the dial. There had to be a mathematical calculation as well.

However, this did not deter A.P.H. He was up every morning at a quarter to eight, waiting. It was a ritual he would not miss, and he was only thwarted when a cloud hid the sun.

‘Get away you cloud!’ he would shout to the heavens. And if it did, the sun shining once again on his cocktail tray and his table top, he would greet with mock solemnity first Shelagh: ‘You’re early by two minutes’ . . . and then Jane: ‘Jane! By your Equatorial Sundial you are three and a half minutes late.’

One morning A.P.H. was still waiting for Jane three-quarters of an hour after she was due to arrive. He was standing by the Equatorial Sundial calling out the minutes: ‘Forty-four, forty-five . . .’ when she came panting apologetically over the hedge to say that Lamb had disappeared. Lamb, the sheep, which Jane and her mother had taken pity on when it was a few weeks old.

‘She was on the grass outside the cottage when we went to bed last night,’ she said, ‘but there is no sign of her anywhere this morning.’

Lamb led an unusual life for a sheep. She was favoured as if she were a dog. She could come in and out of the cottage as she wished, and when she was in the mood she would join Eva and Acid the dogs, Polly the parrot, Sim and Val the cats, for a share of the food at mealtimes. She was part of the household. And at night she either slept in the garden, in a small hut when the weather was bad, or in the grass field on the other side of the garden wall.

‘Perhaps someone has stolen her for her fleece,’ I said. She had a fine fleece which was about ready to be sheared. ‘Anyhow, Jane,’ I added, ‘you go straight back to get on with your search, and we’ll follow you.’

It was a strange coincidence that Lamb should have chosen this moment to disappear. She had been looked after and loved by Jane’s family for over five years. They were her life. I used to pass by their cottage and see her lying in the doorway, reminding me of a Newfoundland dog. She would never be able to get used to other people. Nobody would treat her in the same kind way that Jane and her mother and Jeremy had done. It was a coincidence because, only a few days before, Jane had broken the news to us that they had to give up the cottage. The farm had been sold. Her mother was leaving to take a job on Tresco in the Isles of Scilly; and on Tresco island no dogs were allowed or, one might expect, a pet sheep. Thus a new home would have to be found for Lamb.

‘And what are you yourself going to do, Jane?’ I had asked.

‘Oh, I’m going to stay here. I’ll find somewhere to live.’

I loved her assurance. I realised that sooner or later she would go to join her mother but she would not leave us suddenly. She was loyal to Jeannie and me. She had that blessed quality which enhanced the stature of those with whom she associated. Jeannie and I felt the better when she was with us. She had the gift of infecting us with her enthusiasm, and she exuded a sense of honesty.

‘You can come and stay with me,’ Shelagh said, who was in the flower-house at the time, ‘there’s the outhouse to store your things in, and there’s plenty of room in the caravan for you.’

‘But there’ll be the dogs,’ said Jane.

‘Oh, Bingo won’t mind.’

I took no part in this conversation. It was nothing to do with me. But I wondered what on earth would happen if Bingo, Eva, Acid, and now Acid’s pup, should all be left together for the day long.

We searched the cliffs all morning for Lamb, and clambered down on to the rocks in case she had fallen over. We called at neighbouring farms in case she had wandered to them. Nobody had seen her. And we were beginning to think that she might indeed have been stolen, when Jane suddenly discovered her. She had meandered away from the cottage, down a steep path to the wooded valley where a stream rushes to the sea. When she reached the stream she must have slipped and fallen over. For she was lying in the rushes upside down. She was dead.

This incident developed my feeling of impending sadness. I was influenced, no doubt, by its reminder that a period was ending, the usual sentimental sense of loss which pervades the finish of a chapter of one’s life.

It seemed the wink of an eyelid since we first saw Jeremy playing with Acid outside their cottage on the grass, throwing a ball at her, Acid retrieving it, on and on, hour after hour. Or the first time we saw Jeremy with a fishing rod taller than himself, and holding a tiny rock fish in his hand. ‘A very menacing-looking fish, don’t you think?’ he had suggested. Or when we first met Jane’s mother, tall and young-looking, coming up the path from the little well they used, and telling us that if we employed Jane we would find her ‘very painstaking’. Or that day Jane first came to Minack; and the way she was determined to get the job. Their cottage had seemed without character when we first saw it; but now it would always be alive. We would never be able to pass it without remembering the happiness of the Wyllie family.

At the end of September I loaded the back of the Land Rover with Jane’s belongings and drove them over to Shelagh’s caravan. A carrier had already taken an advance load which included Jane’s harmonium; and when I arrived I found it almost completely filled Shelagh’s outhouse. Jane was determined to keep it at all costs. And indeed, when in due course she left to join her mother on Tresco, the harmonium went too; the last part of its journey being in a motor boat from the main island of St Mary’s. By this time Acid and her pup had been sent to Jane’s married sister; and an exception was made for Eva on Tresco because of her old age and minute size.

Jane’s attitude to a car she and her mother had bought had to be different. It was a little saloon car which they had proudly bought second-hand. It was, however, an unfortunate bargain for they seldom were able to persuade the engine to start. It remained immovable in the backyard of the cottage for month after month, and its only virtue was to provide sleeping quarters for the cats. After her mother left, Jane set out to sell it; and the best offer she received was five pounds for the tyres.

I remember Jane’s fury. It was an insult; and although she was now living in Shelagh’s caravan, her mother in the Scillies, the cottage belonging to a stranger, she indignantly turned down the offer. The car was left where it always had been. A year later it was still there.

She stayed with Shelagh for a month, and then had the luck to be offered a small cottage close by that was let to holiday visitors in the summer. It was still not certain when she would join her mother, and so the routine at Minack went on as usual. She would arrive with Shelagh, both on their bicycles, in the morning, and because it was November and the gales were often blowing and rain whipped the land, Jeannie or I would drive them home in the evening, bicycles in the back of the Land Rover. It was part of the charm of their natures that, the journey ended, they thanked us always so freshly.

The routine revolved mostly around work in the greenhouses where we were growing freesias, spray chrysanthemums, and forget-me-nots; while outside we had wallflowers, anemones and a few stocks and violets. We were no longer growing on a massive scale in the open. We had daffodils, of course, but these would not be beginning to bloom until the end of January.

Jeannie and I were, in fact, conducting a rearguard action. We had been bruised in recent seasons. We had lost a little of our confidence. We were no longer ebullient optimists. We were aiming to play safe; and the cornerstone of the safety had been Jane and Shelagh. They knew our ways, and spurred us on when we were doubtful.

I do not believe age determines whether or not you can be on the same wavelength as another. There is simply a meeting of minds of whatever age which instantly feel at ease, just as there are other times when people, hard as they may try to prevent it, find they resent each other, or are bored. Thus a child can find that his thoughts are fluent, so, too, the means to express them with one teacher, while an hour later, in another class, he finds himself dumb. All he has done has been to be with one teacher who was on his wavelength, another who was not.

There was the incident of the chrysanthemums when, as I was the boss and the mistake was entirely my fault, both Jane and Shelagh could, perhaps, have been justified in reacting with lofty superiority.

There was frost at the beginning of December and it was my job to light the paraffin heaters in the greenhouses. The one in the chrysanthemum house was an elaborate affair, and one night when I lit it, I forgot to replace an important section of the apparatus. It was the vital section which turned the paraffin from smoke into heat. Thus when next morning I arrived at the greenhouse the chrysanthemums resembled the uninhibited dream of a chimney sweep. The leaves and buds of our precious flowers were covered with soot. I felt very ashamed.

‘There’s been an accident,’ I said, after the girls had come swishing over the gravel on their bicycles in the morning, ‘and’ I added, as if I were relieved at the confession, ‘it is entirely my fault . . . believe it or not!’

They, of course, made their comments. I was prepared for that. I knew I was destined for a day of being chided, but then I deserved it.

‘Don’t you think, Mrs Tangye, that we ought to give him a chimney sweep’s outfit for Christmas?’

‘Soap powder and scrubbing brush would be better!’ said Shelagh.

The four of us spent half the morning blowing and puffing the soot off the plants. It was hard work, and if a stranger had seen us I am sure he would have thought we had gone mad. We looked like four people blowing out an endless supply of candles; and we were so slow that I began to wonder whether we could complete the job in the day. Then Shelagh had a bright idea.

‘Why don’t we use our bicycle pumps?’

‘Shelagh,’ I said, ‘you’re a genius. Of course, that’s the answer!’

And it was. Thanks to the bicycle pumps the chrysanthemums in due course were successfully disposed of in Covent Garden.

It is strange, in retrospect, that none of us ever had a warning about Shelagh. Neither Jane nor Jeannie nor I, nor Pat, the girl she saw most evenings and every weekend, none of us can look back and remember some incident that might have given us a clue. She loved her long bicycle rides with Pat, never showing any signs of tiredness; and never once at Minack did Jeannie or I have to say: ‘Shelagh doesn’t look very well today.’ She never complained. She was never lethargic. And I do not believe she missed one day’s work in all the time she was with us.