A Drake at the Door (14 page)

There are, of course, the soft flowers; and by these were meant, in the particular season that Shelagh started with us, the anemones and wallflowers, violets and calendulas, Beauty of Nice stocks, forget-me-nots, freesias and polyanthus. The sun shone down day after day, hurrying the flowers into bloom. Picking, bunching, packing, rushing the boxes to Penzance station, the volume of the work was enormous. We had no time to enjoy the loveliness of the weather. We were blind to the bursting beauty of the spring.

And these flowers also served as hour hands of passing time. First, the stained orange and yellow wallflowers disappeared into the markets leaving a miniature petrified forest where they once sweetened the air; then the Vulcan, and the dazzling crimson of Fireking.

The anemones, greedy for warmth, burst their flowers too soon, looking like pansies; and the heavy dews left moisture on the petals browning the tips, so that we would pick a basket, set them out in jars, then next morning find them unbunchable.

The stocks, sideshoots plucked day after day from the main stems, began to look like a meadow of sticks. The freesias and the polyanthus sheltered by the glass, thus cosseted in normal times from the cold, rewarded our care by resenting the blazing sun; the flowers wilted and lost their colour, the petals were soft and tired even before their journey had begun.

The violets and the calendulas gloried in the warmth; but, because they were so generous they were not wanted. There was a glut everywhere.

Then, as the flowers were consumed, as our consignments to the market became fewer, as our patience and hard work and pride were expended, we slowly began to realise our great plans of a year ago were close to failure. We had succeeded to the extent that we had a vista of flowers, no fault here in the art of growing; only the sun had defeated us. The warmest spring in many years.

Even our Cornish posies had failed us. Jeannie had started these a few years before, while I had given them their name. She had begun by using short and twisted flowers of different kinds which were unsuitable for despatch on their own; and she had gathered them into a bunch, so mingling the varieties and the colours that they became posies of delicious design. The idea was such a success, each posy was such wonderful value, that the markets began asking for more. Thus we grew flowers with the deliberate intention of including them in the posies. Wallflowers gave them body, calendulas a splash of vivid colour, anemones variety, stocks a spring-like scent, forget-me-nots a breathless blue, freesias and polyanthus another reminder to those in distant cities that spring had come to Cornwall.

The snag of these posies was the time they took to prepare. It was an art requiring patience and artistry, a careful mingling of colours and arrangement of shape. I could not do them. My efforts ended, however hard I tried, in an untidy bunch like that of a child holding a random-picked collection of wild flowers. Hence Jeannie was their creator, then under Jeannie’s tuition Jane, and now Shelagh. One could go into the flowerhouse at the end of a day in which they had been posy-making, and the eye marvelled at the patchwork of colours that filled the jars on the shelves.

We were all in this flower-house one day, the three of them working on the posies, myself tying up the boxes prior to taking them to the station when the postman arrived at the door. As usual I quickly opened those envelopes I recognised came from our flower salesman and to my horror I saw the posies had only fetched threepence each. I was enraged, of course, because we calculated that we lost on a posy if we went below a shilling; but I was also very sad. Here around me were Jeannie and the two girls working so hard, and in my hand was the evidence that all their work was a waste of time and money. I was wondering whether to tell them when Shelagh, who had been looking out of the window, suddenly said:

‘The black cat is in the stable meadow.’

At the far end, at the entrance of the gap which opens into the big field, was a spot. It was moving cautiously. It reached a patch of bare ground, hurried, then disappeared into a forest of Cromwell daffodils.

‘I wonder where it comes from?’ said Jane. She was clasping a half-completed posy in one hand, picking a dark-red wallflower from a jar with the other.

‘Poor thing,’ said Jeannie.

It had first been seen a fortnight previously by Jeannie’s mother who had been staying with us. Jeannie’s mother, who had given us Monty as a kitten, was out for a walk with Angus, her Scottie, when he suddenly dashed into the undergrowth barking madly. She thought he had found a rabbit. Instead, a second later, he was back on the path and ahead of him, like a streak of black lightning, was a cat. It was across a field, over a hedge and down the cliff before Angus had gone fifty yards.

The incident had no significance in my mind whatsoever. Nor, for that matter, did the occasion when I first saw the cat for myself. I had gone out early one morning, long before breakfast-time, to make an inspection of the flowers which would be ready to pick that day; and I was passing the calendula meadow when I saw right in the middle, surrounded by the blazing orange of the flowers, a tiny black head and two ears, and a pair of yellow slit eyes. The eyes watched me as I passed, the head moving imperceptibly. I was so occupied by my thoughts that I forgot to mention it to Jeannie until some time afterwards.

‘By the way,’ I said, ‘I saw that cat this morning. It looks a bit young.’

It was perhaps natural that Jeannie should be more interested in these incidents than myself. She had always been a cat lover. Cats held a fascination for her to such an extent that any cat, however casual its acquaintance, would receive her fondling and her affection. I had had only one cat; and in any case at this particular time my mind was filled with anxiety. The flower year was ending, and the bulging enthusiasm with which I planned it was fading away into a great disappointment.

There were, however, still the Wedgewood iris in the mobile greenhouse, twenty thousand bulbs in four beds, climbing stiffly like a multitude of green spires. Here could be a lush harvest, a failure redeemed; and I remember the expert who called one day and saw them, saying to us as if he were gauging the form of a racehorse in the parade ring: ‘If you can beat the Channel Islands by three days you’re on a winner.’

We did not beat the Channel Islands. Indeed we did not beat anybody. The summer-like spring beat us. For the first time in the memory of iris growers, the outside crop of iris coincided with the indoor. And we had hardly begun to pick our harvest when a telegram arrived from our Covent Garden salesman:

‘Send no more. Iris up to warehouse ceiling.’

Sammy returns to the wild

The next time I saw the black cat it was in the chicken run. We kept half a dozen elderly hens in a clearing in the wood, protected from foxes and badgers by high wire netting, the bottom of which was buried in the ground. Nothing could jump over or dig under. But a cat could claw up a tree, leap on to the roof of the chicken house, then drop into the run below.

At one period we kept over forty hens, and the chicken house was spacious and specially designed for such a number. Jeannie had believed they would bring in some useful pin money, and they were, in fact, her responsibility. The eggs also helped, since we lived so far from a shop, to make the daily catering easier for her.

We found, however, as others before us, that the pin money was an illusion and that so much was paid out every week on expensive laying pellets that it was cheaper to buy the eggs. Thus gradually the flock was thinned out until these six old pensioners were left. Very occasionally one of them would lay an egg; but the real justification of their existence was based on sentiment. They each had an identity of their own. The prospect of killing them was out of the question.

I had gone along one morning to open them up when I saw the little black cat inside the run by the chickenhouse door. For a second it stared at me, motionless, then it ran, racing across the run in panic, until it hit the wire netting at the far side. Foolishly I went after it. I do not know what my intentions might have been but my approach increased the cat’s terror and it began clawing at the wire and attempting to thrust its head through the mesh. I suddenly realised it might strangle itself. The head might just possibly get through a hole, but its body, thin though it was, never. For an instant I put out my hands as if to pick it up. The threat of such help from me made it instinctively recoil from the netting; and the next moment I saw it take a flying leap on to the chicken-house roof, up the tree, and down again on to the ground outside the run. It disappeared into the wood behind.

From now on one of us saw the cat almost every day. Sometimes one of the girls saw it when they were picking wallflowers in the sol meadow at the top of the cliff. Another day Shelagh found it in the lane as she was bicycling to work. Jane once frightened it on the path leading to her cottage. And there were numerous times when Jeannie or I spotted it in one of our fields or in our wood. Indeed one of the strange things about its activities was that it was always on
our
land; and yet our land dovetailed into that of my neighbours in most complicated patterns. It kept within Minack boundaries and spurned the others.

But none of us could get anywhere near it. It ran away at the sight of us, although on occasions it sat on a hedge on the far side of a field, watching; a little black spot in the distance. And there were other occasions when it chose to sit in the lane about a hundred yards from the flower-packing shed, the other side of Monty’s Leap, as if it were trying to make up its mind to come nearer.

I was still too busy to take much notice of it. I was worried. The income from the flowers was far below expectations. The reserve I hoped for did not exist; the work had been done, the wages paid out, the bills incurred, and here Jeannie and I were at the flower year’s end without a penny available for our own endeavours. We had both worked for nothing.

Defeat, or danger, is easy to face when it is met suddenly for the first time. One feels elated that the secret self is being challenged. Here is the chance to bring out the hero, the somnolent section of one’s being that longs to justify itself in the dramatic. But I always feel that the very nature of the courage that is required on such occasions is deceptive. It looks like courage while in fact it is an emotional outburst. It can be, indeed, a form of showmanship. In times of sudden danger or defeat one can be so intoxicated by excitement that one is scarcely aware of one’s actions.

The aftermath of such courage is when real courage is needed. The gesture has been made but the danger has remained, and a hangover has taken the place of exultation. One now slips into a remorseless delaying action, a tedious clinging to hope; and one is forced to realise that factors have to be faced which provide no stimulus. They are the factors of repetition, the further defeats, the further dangers, leading one on and on until suddenly comes the day one discovers that despair has replaced the struggle for victory as the enemy.

In the kind of life we had chosen it was Jeannie who was tested when promise was unfulfilled. She had left behind in London so much that earned the envy of others. As the Public Relations Officer of the Savoy Hotel Group she was at the top of her profession. She had a large salary and expense account. She was able to mingle with the famous and live a life that had the trappings of a film star. Her office, as she described in her book
Meet me at the Savoy
, was the meeting place of household names. It was used as a club. At any time you might find there Danny Kaye or James Mason or A. P. Herbert or any of the top newspaper correspondents; and she was described by an American magazine as ‘the prettiest public relations officer in the world.’

She thus had standards by which to judge the value of her present life that were not ordinary. Moreover she knew that if she so wished she could return to London and live again the sophistication she had surrendered. At any moment of doubt the glamour was beckoning. The gaiety was waiting. She could forget the water which had to be pumped from the well, the paraffin lamps, the endless cooking, the long hours of bunching, the cold wet days picking the flowers, the naked simplicity of her existence. She could leave all this behind. She could look back and call it a time of folly. She would not be the only one who wanted to escape, then found escapism too tough, and returned.

Yet she never did consider such an alternative. I never had to listen to her telling me how wonderful things once had been, or could be again. Nor did she put doubt into my mind that I might be demanding too much of her. Instead it was she who gave me the courage. I count myself tenacious but I do not enjoy taking risks. I foresee trouble before it arises and so I can argue myself out of taking bold action. Jeannie on the other hand, acting by instinct, will stride into a situation undeterred by reason; and once embroiled she does not retreat.

Here we were then at the end of March and our only aid was tenacity. It was, as I have said, something I understood; but both of us were weary. Every problem, however simple, was therefore huge. And any solution required the melancholy prospect of starting again the same pattern of growing as the previous year when our hopes had been high. We had, in fact, gambled and lost. We had also, as the result of our gambling, become more involved in the mechanics of living from which we had set out to free ourselves. We could consider ourselves no longer as escapists. We now had responsibilities of a parallel nature to those we had left. We had created dependants. The lives of Jane, Shelagh and Geoffrey were bound up with ours.