A Drake at the Door (20 page)

She cried out: ‘Derek! Derek!’

I had a sick feeling of disaster, and I rushed to her, murmuring those phrases which are aimed to quell distress; ‘All right, all right, I’m coming!’

Charlie had recovered from the blow of Lama’s paw sufficiently to fly to a branch of a nearby elderberry.

It was soothing to see he could fly.

‘Now don’t worry,’ I said to Jeannie, trying to give myself confidence, ‘Lama could not have hurt him. He flew perfectly well to that branch.’

I could see him half hidden by the green leaves, chest puffed out, absolutely still, facing towards us and I could sense his astonishment that after all these years of haunting us, of bellowing his harsh tuneless cry into our ears, that we should have turned on him. I suddenly felt angry.

‘What did I say?’ I said, taking it out on Jeannie, ‘what did I say would happen if we let Lama stay?’

Mine was an outburst which was foolish and unfair. It was nobody’s fault, and yet I was ludicrously, selfishly lashing about for a scapegoat. How could I dare blame Jeannie? Or Lama for that matter? It had been one of the miracles of Lama’s time at Minack that she, like Monty, showed not the slightest interest in birds. The initial suspense as to how she would behave had disappeared from our minds. I had seen her many times sitting in the garden, dozing or washing herself, while Charlie or Tim or the others bobbed around the flowers looking for grubs. She was a gentle little cat. Only mice stirred her hunting desires.

I was ashamed, a moment later, of my outburst but this was no time for apologies. We had to find out how badly Charlie was hurt. He was sitting there on the branch as if he were frightened to subject his wings to the test of flying away. I had never seen him remain still for so long.

‘We’d better try to catch him,’ I said.

I believe, in retrospect, that my real intention was to assure myself that he was all right. I was wanting to catch him not so much as to help him as to prove to myself that help was not needed. I wanted to see him move. I wanted to create the belief that our fears were false. I wanted to advance on him and relish in the glory of his escape from me, seeing him beat his little wings as he always had done.

Yet I knew he would be frightened of me. He was not like Tim. He had never become domesticated. He had never dared come indoors or stand on my hand as Tim did. And yet, remote as he might have been in comparison, he belonged to Jeannie and me. We could call for him, and he would come. We could go a mile away from the cottage and suddenly find him beside us. He had attached himself to us as a mascot, always friendly, but always elusive.

One autumn he disappeared and after a month or two we gave up hope of ever seeing him again. It was natural to think he was dead and as the winter passed and there was still no sign of him we forgot about him. And then one morning in early spring Jeannie went into the wood to feed the chickens when suddenly she was startled by a familiar monotonous cheep just above her head. There was Charlie on a branch. Charlie in magnificent spring plumage. As boisterous as ever. And Jeannie was so excited that she rushed to tell me, forgetting to feed the chickens. He never went away again.

‘You stay this side of the elderberry,’ I said to Jeannie, ‘and I’ll go the other. Then we can converge on him together.’

My intention, if he stayed still, was to let Jeannie catch him. When she was a child she wanted to be a vet, and she had the compassion and gentle touch of those whose ambition is to relieve suffering. She had the courage too, to grasp firmly and not to dither at the instant when calm is the key to success. We advanced.

As soon as we moved I knew we had made a mistake. For he took fright, and tried to fly, but instead of flying this time he fluttered like a falling leaf in a breeze, over a stone wall and down on to the lane which lead to Monty’s Leap and the stream. It was a mistake in that we now knew he was badly hurt; we could no longer watch him and hope.

‘I’ll try again,’ said Jeannie. And she went carefully forward calling him.

We now knew that it was vital to catch him if he were to be saved; and yet each time Jeannie came near to him he fluttered away from her again. He would rise a couple of feet from the ground, then struggle a flight of a few yards and down again, spreadeagling his tiny body in a tussock of grass. He was treating us as his enemies. He had no trust in us. We who had received such joy from him over the years were being refused the chance to repay him. The long familiarity of his perky presence, the countless times we had, in mock anger told him to shut up, the delight of his sudden appearance on a walk, all these memories were dissolving into the climax of his life, a climax in which he was doing all he could to evade our help.

He was now three-quarters of the way down the lane; and the stream, and Monty’s Leap, were only a few yards from him. We suddenly thought there might be method in his fear of us, and that he was seeking water for the same reason we gave water to dazed and injured birds of the greenhouses. We stood still. Three minutes went by. Five. Then Charlie fluttered again, and with an immense effort, half flying, half running, he dumped himself at the stream’s edge on the side of the lane where it dashed on through undergrowth and moor to the waterfall which splashed to the sea.

‘Look,’ said Jeannie, ‘he’s drinking.’

He was dipping his little beak into the water, so alertly, with such an air of brisk sense that both of us had a wave of thankfulness. Impossible, it seemed to us at that moment, that a bird which was really ill would behave in such a manner.

‘Somehow,’ Jeannie said, ‘we
must
pick him up. As he is he won’t last the night – an owl will get him or a rat.’

It was afternoon. Indeed a Sunday afternoon. And we both found ourselves wishing it was an ordinary day. Then the girls would have been with us and we could have discussed the next moves, and we could all have shared the understanding; the understanding that is so absurd to some, the understanding that gives reason to the determination to save a bird’s life.

‘There are two people coming down the lane.’

I said this as I have often done, with a note of apprehension. There is no right of way through Minack but we seldom mind people passing by. In an age when transistors and cars anchor the holidaymakers in car parks and packed beaches, it is refreshing to see those who have the initiative to walk. Nine times out of ten the walkers are delightful, and how strange it is that they are so often foreign students and teachers. It puzzles me how it is that, looking at the brochures and preparing their holiday plans, they come to the decision of walking this lonely coast. It pleases me. It is only the map-makers who distress me; only the neat-minded folk who look for trouble, badgering farmers who in the process of earning a living block up a gap to stop the cattle escaping; and then are ordered to open it again to allow rare crocodiles of organised walkers to scurry on their way. Even in this untamed land there are those who wish to spoil it. The busybodies. Those who will never be able to understand solitude. For it is the solitude, I have found, the total freedom from signposts and selfconscious man-made paths which attracts the visitors who pass Minack. In this crowded, overorganised world they have found peace in this stretch of Cornwall which has been spared the planners.

‘Who are they?’

It was essential that we should not be interrupted in our vigil. If two brash walkers came by, ignorant and insensitive to our task, Charlie would become more frightened than even we had made him.

And then suddenly we saw it was Shelagh. Shelagh and Pat, her girlfriend who lived in Newlyn. No purpose in their visit. Just the inclination for a Sunday afternoon walk along Minack cliffs. A lucky coincidence that led them to us at the exact moment we needed Shelagh most. Jeannie and I were so pleased to see her that she was startled by the reception we gave her.

‘Why do you think I can help?’

Yet she knew. We did not have to answer her. This was one of the occasions which she would look back upon, revelling in it, rejoicing in the proof that she was needed. She knew she could catch Charlie. There was this primitive, uncomplicated kindliness about her which would permit her to go straight to him. There would be no doubts in her mind to make her hesitate. She would go forward, bend down, and pick him up. As easy as that. And that is what happened.

We put him in a small box of dried grass in a warm corner of the greenhouse. He was very weak and both his eyes were now closed. There was nothing we could do to help him and in a few hours he was dead. A little silent bundle of feathers.

The next day Jeannie wrote a rhyme:

Dear Charlie, we teased you much about your voice

That sharp, shrill cry.

But how today we would rejoice

To hear you call against the sky.

And having buried him at the foot of the same tree on which he had greeted Jeannie that spring after he had been away, we went down to the cliff meadows. We wanted to be on our own for a little while. We went into a meadow which lies directly above the sea guarded by a low old stone wall. We sat on the grass, the sea before us blue as the Mediterranean and behind, hedging the opposite side, the blazing yellow of the gorse bushes. We had been there for a few minutes when suddenly we were startled by a familiar cry. A monotonous cry. And there, just above us, was a chaffinch perched on a gorse bush.

‘This is unreal,’ I said to Jeannie.

But it wasn’t. It never left us for the half-hour we sat in the meadow, and when we returned to the cottage it came with us, chirping all the way like the yap of a small dog. From then on it took Charlie’s place and although it did not possess his boisterous nature and was more timid and not nearly so thrusting on the bird table, we felt that the uncanny way it had replied to Jeannie’s rhyme had earned it a worthy name. He became known to us therefore as Charlie-son.

Jane, at this time, was enjoying a passion for music and one day she proudly announced that she had become the owner of a house-sized Wurlitzer organ.

‘Now, Jane,’ I asked, ‘what does that mean?’

One of her charms was that she skated between the serious and the comic; and so when she made this announcement I was a little on guard whether or not she was strictly speaking the truth. She was such a glorious enthusiast that she deserved to be given a leeway in her remarks; for I know myself if I am exulting over some idea I may have had, flushing its prospects with exaggeration, that I resent a listener quelling the sense of it by logic. It is wise to be foolish sometimes, to experiment, to court mistakes; for one cannot embroider personal achievement in any other way. One remains sterile if one always plays safe. It is essential to be mad on occasions.

‘I ought to call it a harmonium,’ she said, looking at me and smiling, ‘but a Wurlitzer organ sounds better.’

Heaven knows what prompted her to buy it. She couldn’t even play the piano, or any other musical instrument for that matter. I think perhaps the idea began with a romantic picture of her sitting in the cottage, the window open, answering the roar of the sea and the cries of the gulls with the volume of her music; and mingling all the sounds together in a hymn to her happiness. Whatever the reason it was not a practical one.

The harmonium had spent many years in a Wesleyan Chapel near Camborne until, worn out, it was bought by a dealer who repaired it, then sold it to Jane for nine pounds. It was a bargain price, and he topped it by offering to deliver it free. Poor chap, he did not know the problems ahead because after travelling the long lane to the cottage he found the door too small for the harmonium; and he had to take it to pieces, carry them into the cottage and put them together again.

‘And now,’ said the man, his task completed, wanting a musical reward for his pains, ‘let me hear you play.’

Jane sat down, pounded the pedals with her feet, and crashed out some most unharmonious chords. She did this, apparently, with élan; indeed she behaved according to character. She could not play a note but she wasn’t going to admit it. She possessed, in fact, courage.

We were given the account of this incident early the following morning when we were cutting lettuces. It was a solemn period of the day. The lettuces had to be delivered at Jacksons, our wholesalers in Penzance, by half-past eight in the morning; and as Jane lived nearest she used to come in early to help us cut and pack them. She was usually three-quarters asleep.

‘Jane, you dormouse, wake up!’

There was a routine in which Jane could play her part automatically, in a daze. I used to go up and down the rows pinching the hearts of the lettuces and cutting those which were full. Jane would follow along after me picking up those I had cut and carrying them back on a tray to Jeannie who was on her knees, surrounded by lettuce crates, cleaning each lettuce of its dirty leaves, then packing them twenty-four to a crate.

The sight, in a small way, was impressive when ten crates were full and Geoffrey, who had arrived by this time, was loading them in the Land Rover. But were they worth the trouble? In an age when time-and-motion experts reduce the prospects of reward for most endeavours to decimal points of profit, I hesitate to believe that our lettuces rewarded us.

Look what had to happen before the housewife bought one. The ground had to be prepared, the fertilisers scattered, the seeds sown, the seedlings thinned out, watering going on all the time, hoeing, probably a battle against greenfly, and then the climax when they were ready for harvesting.

‘I’ve a fine crop of lettuces,’ I would say to Jacksons’, ‘how many would you like?’

Having pursued the struggle of growing them and having poured out the cost, a grower when asking this question is in the same mood as a prima donna before an opera performance. He is tensed.

‘How many?’

‘Oh well,’ comes the answer, ‘the public are not buying lettuce. Say ten dozen.’

Jeannie and I have spent many hours of our lives standing in the forecourt of Jacksons’ store on the front at Penzance discussing lettuces with Fred the foreman or one of the Jackson brothers.