Up With the Larks (15 page)

'Oh, uh, no thanks, I brought all those basics down with us
from London.'

Before she can shut the door again I say quickly, 'I meant
your cat, Marmalade. He's still in our freezer back at the post
office.'

She looks at me as if I were a lunatic until the penny finally
drops. 'Oh,
that
Marmalade, of course. I'm so sorry, I'm not
quite with it today. Such a chore, getting organized to come
down here. And Adam not able to get away until the weekend.'

'I'm sure it must be,' I say, trying very hard to be sincere.
Having a second home is such a burden, I want to say, I'm so
glad we haven't that worry.

We stand there looking at each other for a moment. I'm
waiting for her to tell me when she's going to collect her frozen
cat but she doesn't say a thing, only stands there politely waiting
for me to go. Finally I say, 'You wanted us to keep him until
half term so your children could have a funeral. So will you
collect him yourself from Morranport? Or would you like me
to deliver him with your post?'

She looks horrified. 'Oh dear. Oh no, God no.'

'That's fine then. You can collect him any time from nine
to five. Nell will be there at the post office, she knows where
to find him.'

But Mrs Johnson is shaking her head. 'Look, uh, oh sorry,
I've forgotten your name . . .'

'Tessa Hainsworth.'

'Tessa, I'm so sorry to put you to all this trouble but the
children seem to have forgotten all about Marmalade. In fact
we've already got another cat; he's in London with Adam. So
if you don't mind disposing of the, uh, carcass, I'd very much
appreciate it. Now, if you'll excuse me, I must go and sort out
the twins.' She closes the door firmly without another word.

Back at Morranport Nell says, 'I've got a good mind to go
meself to that fool of a woman and leave the body on the
doorstep. What she be thinkin' of ?'

'I don't know but it looks like we're stuck with a frozen cat
in the freezer indefinitely.'

She glares at me. I shrug, rolling my eyes.

And then, as we usually do in ludicrous situations like this,
Nell and I begin to giggle, then laugh, with such abandon that
a customer walks into the shop, takes one look at us and walks
out hurriedly.

'We've got to stop this,' I gasp when I can talk again. 'You've
just lost a customer.'

'Must of been a stranger,' Nell gasps when she can speak
again. 'Anyone else would of stayed on, found out what be
goin' on so he could join the fun.'

No doubt others did. The tale of frozen Marmalade was all
around Morranport by the next morning.

I'm feeling so settled into my job now that I've decided to
make a real effort to fit into the community. The first thing I
do is to get involved in an after-school gardening club for the
children at our local primary school.

I run it together with Daphne. My relationship with her is
still the same, confined to a chat in the village shop and at
school functions. Once or twice I've hinted that we meet more
often but she pretends she doesn't get it. I'm resigned to it by
now though it still saddens me.

The gardening club idea came to us while Daphne and I
were waiting for the children one afternoon. We were standing
near the wonderful garden attached to the school which was
unused and overgrown. Daphne and I agreed that it was a
waste, all that lovely space gone to seed, and that was how it
all started.

Twenty-five children sign up for our club. First I'm excited
then worried. What do we do with them? What will we grow?
Where will we get all the seeds, the young plants, the compost,
the pots? But first things first, I tell myself.

Daphne has a couple of cows calving and she's unable to
concentrate on the gardening club during this time so I'm on
my own the first day, with twenty-five eager young faces
gleaming at me ready to be inspired.

By me?
I panic. I can already hear Annie's giggles as I tell her
about this. She knows I've never been a gardener who knows
what she's doing but there's a first time for everything, isn't there?
It's a cold cloudy day but at least it's not raining, not yet. A strong
sou'westerly is beginning to blow but I'm determined to keep
the troops' morale high. 'Chocolate digestives, children,' I shout,
brandishing the biscuit packet high above my head. It nearly
blows out of my hand but before my audience can dissolve into
anarchic laughter I cry, 'And orange squash for all! Let's picnic
before we start, and when we finish we'll have more treats.'

Biscuits crunched and drinks downed, the youngsters set to
work with spades and forks, setting into the overgrowth like
a wraith of pint-sized furies. It takes a number of after-school
sessions and the help of several parents we've roped in before
finally the ground is cleared and dug over, ready to be planted
when the planting season is upon us. Right now it's wet and
freezing but it won't be long till spring.

'Miss, what will we plant?' one of the more precocious
children asks me.

'Not sure.' I hadn't thought that far ahead. I was far too
concerned with getting the ground prepared while the rains
held off. Just as well too, for it's pouring now. Wildly I look
around for Daphne but she's just gone home. The rest of us
have all run inside the school house where we are waiting for
the storm to let up.

Others are taking up the chorus. 'What will we plant, Mrs
Hainsworth? What are we going to grow?'

'Runner beans!' a bright-eyed sprog of a child shouts. The
others start to add their penny's worth.

'No, peas. I love peas.'

'Onions! Great hu-mun-gous onions to make the girls cry!'

'Shut up Alan, I bet you cry as much as girls.'

'Don't.'

'Do.'

'Sunflowers! Let's grow lots and lots of sunflowers.'

'And pink flowers and red flowers and blue and yellow
and . . .'

'And onions!'

'And beans to make the boys fart!'

'We never!'

This is getting out of hand. 'SHUSH EVERYONE.' I put
on my stern no-nonsense voice. 'We'll grow everything we can.
IF you all behave yourselves.'

Foul weather hits Cornwall so our gardening project has
to move inside. Daphne and I get everyone to write recipes
for things we'd like to cook with the vegetables we'll grow.
We draw pictures of gardens and make paper flowers. We
collect yogurt pots to fill with compost and plant seedlings.
The trouble is, we have no compost, no seeds or seedlings,
and no money to buy these things. And so I take my problem
to my customers.

By now I'm getting to know them quite well. Mr Hawker,
my poor, dear, sad, old man, has become almost a friend in
that we always chat for at least ten minutes, sometimes more,
when I deliver his post. I've discovered he likes KitKats so
every week I take him a pack of six small ones. He thanks me
solemnly and profusely. He gives me things too – an old
women's magazine he found in one of his cupboards somewhere,
an apple left over from a box that Martin and Emma
Rowland gave him last autumn. I accept all these things with
the same profusion of thanks and solemnity he gives me when
I present my KitKats.

Other customers are beginning to give me things too –
the odd bunch of early spring flowers, a jar of home-made
marmalade, some frozen blackberries in an old margarine
carton. Susie told me at the start not to refuse anything, no
matter how mouldy the fruit, or how many jars of marmalade
I already have gathering dust in my cupboards. 'You'll be
hurtin' their feelings bad,' she said to me gravely, 'if you
don't take their gifts.'

Now I am going to beg for gifts. I tell all the customers I
get a chance to talk to about the school's gardening club, tell
them how we're on the scrounge for supplies. By the next
week, people on my route are waiting outside as I arrive to
give me half-filled bags of compost, plastic pots, ceramic basins
and cuttings from favourite plants.

When I deliver to Trehallow, the 'doggie' hamlet as I call
it in my head, I risk Batman's wrath to accept sprigs of
rosemary from his keeper, my favourite little old great-grandmother.
Batman is usually inside when I arrive, howling
his huge canine head off. 'He likes you,' Great-grandmother
tells me. 'That's his bark when someone he knows and likes
comes around.'

Silly me, not recognizing a happy bark, I think as I go away
with the cuttings. Pity Royal Mail didn't add How to Talk Dog
in their induction.

Others in Trehallow are generous too. Lily, the border terrier
who is on a perpetual diet, is actually allowed three green
biscuits while her owner rummages in her garden shed and
comes out with a tray of leek seedlings. 'The luck o' the Irish
to you, maid,' she says as she always does. I've given up
wondering why this Cornish woman always wishes me Irish
luck and just accept it gladly.

Blackie, the next door's mongrel, hears me and is yapping
for her biscuit before I even get to the garden gate. It's
bone-shaped yellow biscuits for Blackie and as I drop them
into her salivating mouth her owners, the roly-poly Tweedledee
and Tweedledum, come waddling out and say in unison,
'Oh Tessa, we be hearing 'bout your garden club.'

They, and Blackie, herd me into their greenhouse and by
the time I leave, my van is full of marvellous cuttings and tiny
plants: courgettes, runner beans and lettuce, ready soon to be
planted out into our newly prepared soil.

When I tell Martin and Emma Rowland about the school
gardening club, they're more enthusiastic than I am. Since they
lost the farm and had to open the B&B, they've taken to gardening
in a big way. 'Never had time for it when we were farming,'
Emma told me. 'But I find time now, even during busy season.
Soothes my soul. Soothes Martin, too. He's never got over not
working the land, so working a garden is at least next best.'

When I next deliver to them, they're both waiting for me.
They too start filling my van with all sorts of plants and
cuttings, mountains of them. They add some organic fertilizer
– 'We've got loads' – and even some old tools that they say
they don't need any more.

I try to thank them but Martin scowls, trying to look blustery.
''Tis nothing, maid.'

Then his face lightens. A pick-up has arrived and in the
back, sitting on a clean pile of straw, are two small brown
goats. 'Look, the little 'uns are here,' he beams at his wife.

He takes them out, one by one. They've just been weaned,
the farmer who brought them tells us. Martin is already
talking to them, calming them like his own children, as he
leads them to their waiting field and pen.

Emma says, watching him, 'He does miss his animals so. I
thought if we got a couple of goats, it would be something.
He can go out and talk to them when the guests drive him up
the wall.'

From Trelak Farm, I go to Mr Hawker with one lone
envelope, obviously a circular. He hears me coming and is
standing at his open door waiting for me. We exchange a few
words about the weather then he stiffly, awkwardly, thrusts
something out at me, obviously wanting me to take it. 'I heerd
tell from Martin you be doing a garden thing with the kiddies.
Here be some seeds fer it.'

I take the two packets of runner bean seeds. They're covered
with dust and grime; the packaging looks old-fashioned, the
colours faded. Mr Hawker must have dug them out from a
shed or cupboard where they'd stood for years, maybe even
decades.

'Why thank you, Mr Hawker,' I say, moved once again by
this kind old man. 'This will certainly be a help.'

As I drive away I turn to look at him. He's still standing in
the open doorway, his hand up in a slight wave.

I bring my loot to the school and Daphne smiles while the
kids hoot and cheer. 'My goodness, Tessa, haven't you done
well,' she says.

'Not me, my customers,' I tell her.

During the next week, while the weather remains foul, we
put plants in pots, cuttings into compost and plant seeds in
long planters. We label and make notes with all the enthusiasm
of those early Victorian plant gatherers.

And then, when the weather improves, it's time to put some
of the plants out, early though it still is. For this is South
Cornwall where things of a seasonal nature happen far earlier
than anywhere else in England, like plants growing and birds
nesting. Which they're doing now, some of them. I hear them
in the early morning dawn, making their birdsong. Blackbirds,
robins, skylarks, doves – the sky seems full of melody as winter
turns slowly into spring. Often these days I stop the van on
lonely country lanes to listen and watch. In London my only
connection with these marvellous feathered creatures was the
odd bedraggled pigeon but here you can't help but be a bird
lover. We've even learned to love chickens. Impulsively, longing
for free range eggs, Ben and I have bought half a dozen point-of-lay chickens,
beautiful brown Rhode Islanders with yellow
legs. Ben built a house for them in the back garden and we've
fenced off a section of lawn where they can roam freely and
happily. I can't wait to start eating the eggs.

Easter comes at the end of March this year and there is a
school fête to raise money. It's a Saturday afternoon and the
whole village turns out: children, parents, grandparents and
siblings, dogs and cats and even a pet rabbit on a lead. It's
another balmy day with the March winds mercifully at bay
today. Ben, the kids and I walk to the school and as Will and
Amy go on ahead, we linger at the kaleidoscope of colour in
the village. The magnolias are in full bloom and are now joined
by rhododendrons and azaleas. The colours are dazzling – bright
blues and purples, pale pinks and creamy whites, oranges of
every shade from pale marmalade to dark amber. It will go on
like this next month and the next, this chaos of colour.

We get there early as I'm going to man our gardening club
stall while Ben runs a 'Pluck the Pheasant' stall. He's made a
free-standing wooden pheasant cut out with feathers he got
from a gamekeeper's wife, and the child that plucks a feather
tipped with red nail polish wins a lolly. There are food stalls
and tea stalls, great tables laden with clean quality used clothes
for a jumble sale, an assortment of games to play – guessing
how many coins in a bottle, throwing hoops and tug-of-war.

I have several young helpers on my gardening stall and
they're doing just fine, so I let them take over while I roam
around. Daphne stops to say she'll take over our stall for the
last hour, to free the youngsters. She's with several of her
friends from the village, all laughing and talking easily. I watch
them as they go off and mingle with the crowd, thinking of
what several non-Cornish residents have told me, that it takes
about twenty years to be accepted, so it's early days yet.

I go back to our stall which was crammed with all the seedlings
and other plants we didn't have room for in the school garden.
Unfortunately, the labels the children had so carefully placed on
everything had smeared, so that no one knew what they were
buying. Despite that, everything has gone, even the dozen small
pots with the rosemary cuttings dipped in root powder that I'd
helped the kids to plant. 'Ah,' I say when I realize they've gone.
'Oh dear.' I'd put them aside when I saw that the rosemary
hadn't taken, that these were all small pots of dead stalks. 'Well,
it was for a good cause,' I mutter to myself, counting the great
wad of money we'd just made for the school.