A Drake at the Door (7 page)

‘What are you doing, Jane?’

It was just before the lunch hour, and I happened to pass Jane as she, barefooted, was bending earnestly over both filter and pail. She looked up at me so freshly, having noticed no note in my voice to suggest that, in reality, I was vexed with her, and said:

‘I’m rescuing the tadpoles.’

Then, of course, I saw what was happening. The suction of the pipe in the well up the lane was sucking the tadpoles, which abounded at that time of the year in the well, into the pipe which led to the greenhouse; and quickly, they were blocking the filter. Jane, having discovered what was happening, served both the tomato plants by cleaning the filter and the tadpoles by returning them to the well.

‘I take them up in my lunch hour back to the well,’ she said timidly, yet with a tiny note of defiance, ‘or at the end of the day.’ She had put them, of course, in the pail. That was how she was spending her time when she prompted my doubt about her. What could I say?

I was down on my knees beside her before I spoke. A tadpole, still alive, was clutched to the face of the filter, and Jane, with a stalk of couch grass, was easing it away. It was flabby. A tiny piece of flabbiness that, to rescue, would make all the clever people laugh. It was a thing alive, but why help it? What a strange waste of time to find pleasure in an object so unproductive. And yet this was the kind of pleasure that was the pulse of mankind, the creed of those who prefer to face the present rather than scurry away.

‘My dear Jane,’ I said in a very practical manner, ‘I’m all in favour of you helping the tadpoles . . . but they’ll only come back again through the pipe.’

She glanced up at me, just a flash, as if I were an ignorant man.

‘Only a few,’ she said, ‘the others will be safe.’ Then she grinned, looking up at me as if she had known all the time what I had been thinking, making me feel foolish, ‘I’ll be working an extra half-hour today!’

We had a wonderful crop of tomatoes that summer, and Jeannie and I were quick to realise that the success was a signpost to the future. We still grew potatoes on a large scale, but here was an alternative for a summer income which did not suffer the everlasting threat of obliteration by the elements. I saw too another particular advantage. Tomatoes and potatoes are of the same family, and if our district was noted for the earliness of the potatoes, it could also be noted for the earliness of the tomatoes; and earliness, of course, meant a chance of higher prices. Furthermore there was not the expense of sending the crop to distant markets. We could sell every tomato we picked in Penzance. The vast influx of holiday-makers were waiting to eat them.

We put in the plants, that first year, in the beginning of April, and by the middle of June they were a festoon of ripening fruit. We began to have visitors. Word had got around among neighbouring farmers of our good fortune and, although they would never grow a tomato themselves, they could not forbear to investigate the extent of our success. It was a relief to us that we had something so pleasant to show them. It was a change. Instead of insecurely seeking their advice I was able to talk to them on a subject they knew nothing about. Of course, I knew little myself, and I am not much wiser even now; but I have learned certain principles which now set the pace of our growing at Minack.

It is no use growing our own plants from seed because too much time and labour are involved. Seedlings require the art of the expert and in my case, as far as we were concerned, they take up space in a greenhouse just at the period when we need that space for the winter flower crop. It is more profitable, therefore, to collect cash for the flowers and pay out cash for the plants.

But this policy is not as straightforward as it sounds. If we grew our own plants they would be there on the premises to plant out in their permanent positions whenever it happened to suit us. We could delay or hasten the planting out according to the progress of the winter flowers; if the flowers, freesias, for instance, were still blooming and fetching a good price, we could hold back the tomatoes for a week or so. If, because of a warm spring, the flowers finished early, the tomatoes could be planted early. We would, in fact, be independent.

As it is we are at the mercy of whoever it is we have asked to supply us. We order the plants before Christmas, state a guesswork of a date when we will want them, then are ready to accept the panic which is sure to beset us. It is not only the progress of our flowers that we have to worry about; we can also expect the supplier suddenly to disrupt our carefully laid plans by saying he is delivering the plants a week early, or for that matter, it could equally be a week later.

Thus from the middle of March to the beginning of April every year I am generally in a state of high excitement. I am not alone. Tomato growers all over the country are also yelping cries of distress. Shall we scrap the flowers, which are still earning us money? If we don’t, where can we put the tomatoes in the meantime? Don’t you realise they’ll get leggy if we put the soil blocks too close? Surely it’s wiser to look after the tomatoes from the beginning?

When the turmoil is over and the plants are in the ground, there begins a pleasant period of observation. The period in which the little plants create pleasure by the sturdy way they show they accept their new quarters. It is now that Jeannie and I will waste time together in the greenhouse, staring fixedly at the plants and making remarks to each other such as:

‘They’re an awfully good colour.’

‘That one over there has a flower already.’

‘Hello, there’s one with stem rot.’

‘Don’t tell me that’s a Moneymaker. It’s a rogue.’

As they develop, as they progress from the innocent stage of lining the greenhouse in straight rows like guardsmen on parade, both Jeannie and I become more suspicious.

‘Am I imagining it? But some look like missing their first truss.’

‘Why is it that every year that patch on the left, halfway down, has such a pale green?’

‘I don’t know, Jeannie, but some of these stems seem a little thin. I’ll start feeding.’

It is wonderful the various ways that one can be advised how to grow a good crop of tomatoes. So many experts, never lacking assurance, pronounce what the grower ought to do. Some, for example, say you should begin feeding as soon as the plants have been planted. Others, that you must let a plant struggle to establish itself; a kind of test of character suggesting that plants are like students. The diet is equally perplexing.

As a matter of convenience we fed the tomatoes that first year with a concoction having the title of Orange Ring. We read, however, in an article in the trade press, that this was a lazy way of feeding; and as we were amateurs desperately anxious to grow the right way we duly took note of what we ought to have done. At successive stages of growth we should have given them Red Ring, Orange Ring, Blue Ring, and finished up with Green Ring; and technically speaking this meant that they begin with a high amount of potash and ended with a high amount of nitrogen. Can you imagine our confusion then, when the following year the pontification was reversed? And that we were right in the first place? That Orange Ring fed all the way through the season had now been proved to give the best results?

But now it is the end of June and we are beginning to pick; and Jane has emerged from the green forest with a basket of tomatoes in either hand and with the news that she has only picked a single row.

‘There are masses in there,’ she says excitedly, ‘absolutely masses.’

It is a sweet moment when a long-awaited harvest awakes. It shares the common denominator of pleasure which embraces all endeavours that have taken a long time to plan, to nurture, and then suddenly bursts before your eyes in achievement. You are no longer an onlooker waiting impatiently. The harvest is there to give you your reward; the fact of it destroys your worries and galvanises you into action. I know of few things so evergreen sweet as the first picking of a new crop.

But mine, as far as the tomatoes were concerned, was only a token picking. It was Jeannie and Jane who disappeared into the greenhouse twice a week; and then Shelagh too when she came to work for us and we had the additional greenhouses. I was considered too clumsy. It was alleged that I carelessly knocked the trusses as I passed down the rows, knocking off tomatoes before they were ripe, stepping on and squashing them as they lay on the soil. It was pleasant for them to have a butt.

‘He’s an elephant, isn’t he, Mrs Tangye?’

‘Elephants should be more careful.’

A pause for a few moments as the picking continued. Then a small voice and a giggle.

‘Oh, well, some jobs men will never do as well as women.’

I was, therefore, in charge of taking the tomatoes to the packing shed, grading and packing them, then driving the chips to Penzance. Each full chip, of course, weighed twelve pounds and I separated them into two grades; normal-sized tomatoes, then misshapen and small ones together. Such straightforward grading is, however, considered a sin. The cry is for perfect uniformity. The perfect chip of tomatoes, in the opinion of the leaders of the industry, is one that contains fruit of exactly the same shape, as if the contents have been churned out of a machine.

Flavour, it seems, does not matter; the tomato can taste of nothing at all and still win the laurels. Perfect shape, perfect size, but it can taste of soap; and this campaign of artificial standards is considered essential if the needs of the housewife are to be met. Who is this palateless housewife? No doubt a computer-produced automaton.

Thus I continue to grade on the basis that people still want tasty tomatoes and therefore, within reason, the shape and size are unimportant. And yet how much longer will I be able to do this? I grow a tomato variety which is bred to have flavour. The thousands and thousands of tons of tomatoes which are shipped into this country every year have only shape as their merit. These varieties produce more tomatoes per plant and can be sold cheaper. It therefore may be only a question of time before, I too, sell tasteless tomatoes.

When you have a crop such as tomatoes which you sell locally, it is tempting to bypass the wholesaler and court the retailers and hotels instead. In theory it is a splendid idea. You will obviously get a better price. But there are snags in the theory which Jeannie and I soon found out when we tried this method of sales ourselves.

To begin with we had the wrong temperaments. We could not bargain. We could not say to a retailer: ‘The price is so much.’ Instead we would arrive at the shop and timidly ask what price they could give us which would allow them a profit. We were not in command. We were supplicants. And if indeed they expressed a desire for so many chips on the following Friday, on the preceding Thursday we would take so much time selecting the tomatoes that it would have been more profitable from a man-hour point of view to have sold them at half the price elsewhere.

As for hotels, they provided us with a subtle danger. If I were leaning against a bar having a pint, and the landlord asked for three chips next Saturday morning, I would of course have to say I would deliver them. The landlord would infer he was doing me a favour by helping me to dispose of my produce.

But Saturday would come, and being in a peaceful mood, the last thing I then wanted was to drive to Penzance. The chips of tomatoes, however, were promised. I had to take them. I was in business, and I would be collecting sixpence a pound more than I would have done at a wholesaler. Eighteen shillings, in fact, for the three chips.

The cost of the Land Rover at a shilling a mile was ten shillings; and so, from an accountant’s point of view, I now had eight shillings left as a profit.

That, unfortunately, was not the end of my expenses. Having come into Penzance with the tomatoes in a mood of duty instead of pleasure, it did not take much persuasion to stay a little longer than I had planned. A little longer than both of us had planned.

Because Jeannie and I always went together unless there was a specific reason not to do so. Neither of us has ever developed the habit of going out on our own. Jeannie had never shown any inclination to take part in gatherings of her sex, while I have never discovered the advantage of spending a session in men’s company at the expense of leaving her at home. And so when tomatoes were to be delivered at a hotel I would always hope that Jeannie would come with me.

We would arrive and the landlord would offer us a drink. A little later, when he had paid me, I would offer him one in return. And now would begin the rising of our
alter egos
, the egos which were occasionally waiting to beckon us back to the life we used to know. We began to enjoy ourselves. We became careless and forgetful. And so it was not until we returned to Minack, bumping down the lane to the cottage, that we remembered our tomato profit had been dissipated. Nothing had been gained except the anger of time wasted, nothing achieved except a limpid imitation of a life of which we had grown tired. The tomatoes embroiled us. It would be safer to deal through a wholesaler.

I first met my wholesaler when I was walking down Market Jew Street and a voice shouted at me, aggressive, but friendly:

‘When are we going to do business?’

The voice, in fact, belonged to half my wholesaler, to George, the Jackson brother with a handlebar moustache. He and his brother Harold had built up from a borrowed five-pound note a chain of retail green-grocery shops in West Cornwall, apart from a wholesale business in the area served by lorries.

So I began sending them potatoes, then crates of lettuce, and in due course, they began receiving all our tomatoes. We committed our produce entirely to them. We neither sought other outlets or argued about the price. It was as if, having endured the stresses of growing, we had no energy left to cosset the produce on its final stage. Thus as time went by they became a barometer of our progress. They were always fair.

‘Easing up on potatoes, aren’t you? Wise, old man, you’re wise.’

‘Been a good lettuce year for you. I’ve been looking at the figures.’