A Gull on the Roof (12 page)

The winds curl Minack in winter. In the beginning while we sat snug in the cottage a sense of security acted as a narcotic against the roar outside. A book, a pipe, the scent of a wood fire, Monty on my lap, there was comfort in joining the ghosts who had listened to the same rage, in sheltering within the walls that withstood centuries of siege. Then as we passed through the shoals of first enthusiasm, facing the reality of the task we had undertaken, tension replaced comfort as the winds blew.

I am afraid now when the westerly comes galloping over the hill behind the cottage and charges with thundering hoofs into the elms that edge the wood; when the northerly steps aloofly along the valley, chilling its visit with frost; when the easterly bites from the Lizard, mouthing the sea and ripping our cliff which puts up a hand to stop it; when the southerly brings the rain and the storm which binds the sea and the land in gloom. For all are our enemies. Those from the east and the south carry salt as they blow, salt which films over flower petals and leaves and burns them papery white. That from the west savages the crops like a madman, that from the north shivers black the plants in its way. I have learnt now the wisdom of Tommy’s advice when, at the start, he said to me one day: ‘We’ll have to have good hedges if we’re going to save our crops, and the sooner we start planting them the better.’

I remember at the time that I was grateful to Tommy for looking ahead. The evening before, a man in a pub had asked whether we had yet packed our bags. ‘Everyone roundabouts,’ said he facetiously, ‘is sure you’ll never stay. You won’t stand Minack in winter . . . oh no! Minack’s all right in summer. But winter . . .!’ Only the seasons could prove to those who were watching us that we were not flirting with the life we had chosen, and that we belonged to the land they loved; like recruits to a battle-proved battalion we had to wait to earn respect. Meanwhile our ways were sure to be smiled at, and our failures seized upon as evidence of coming surrender; and so when Tommy countered the prophecies of our departure by discussing the planning of hedges for the future, his unconscious gesture gave us unreasonable pleasure. But the advice itself made me apprehensive.

There were so many other tasks to perform, so many other things on which to spend our limited capital that it seemed a dreary prospect to lay out time and money on hedges which would take years before they became effective. I know now that my attitude was that of an amateur who is unable to believe that the conquest of the land is only achieved by monumental patience. I was in a hurry. My chief concern was to earn sufficient money from immediate crops to secure our survival. I had no time for the laying of foundations and my faith depended on the years ahead looking after themselves; and yet my instinct conflicted with my inclination and I knew that I should listen to Tommy. ‘All right,’ I said to him half-heartedly, ‘I’ll find out what we ought to do.’ I proceeded to find out, then discarded my findings, and compromised with a plan of my own; and the result is that even today I am ashamed of my hedges.

Hedge planning is in effect the mapping of a market garden, and that was another reason why I was shy of it. What kind of a map did I want? I did not know. I was not a man sitting at a desk drawing up a blueprint with skilled experience behind him. I could see no further ahead of me than potatoes and more potatoes, interspersed with daffodils, violets and anemones, and I possessed a sublime faith that a vague number of these would provide our living. What number, I had no idea. Nor the ground space which would represent an economic unit. Costs in relation to turnover were a mystery to me and thus prospective profits, if any, were a blank figure. True, I tried to find out, but the growers I talked to were loquacious about their contradictory methods of growing yet dumb on finance. They looked prosperous in their fashion and I was not to know that at this particular time they had passed the peak of the war and post-war years and their profits had begun a diminishing slide. The Horticultural Advisory Service of the Ministry of Agriculture were helpful on the techniques of growing but they too were silent on how to make a market garden pay. I suppose I was expecting too much of them because Minack, in the eyes of an expert, was a folly, and no professional market gardener would ever consider embarking on the task Jeannie and I had set ourselves. We were aiming to make a market garden out of a home, instead of a home out of a market garden.

It was a coincidence that the Ministry of Agriculture itself was establishing a vast experimental horticultural station from one hundred acres of farm land thirty miles away at Camborne at the same time as we were scratching our heads over our own few acres. Rosewarne, as it is called, is now a showplace of planning achievement and there is not an aspect of horticulture – except how to make it pay – that is not investigated. Similar experimental stations, including those maintained by large private firms, exist all over the country, and in the past few years they have developed into being an industry within an industry. Vast sums of money are spent, hordes of scientists and manual workers employed, bevies of reports are issued – while the humble grower who provides the purpose for all this effort remains in the earthy reality of shortage of capital, higher costs and falling prices.

Progress is the scientist’s justification, and in the horticultural sphere this means the conquest of the soil and plant diseases, and the production of larger and better crops. This praiseworthy aim is pursued without any thought of likely economic results and thus a scientist’s howl of success may be the grower’s toll of doom. Daffodil bulbs have in the past been checked from overproduction by the fly which lays its eggs within them in the spring, the larvae of which eats and destroys them. Today there is a chemical which, if the bulbs are dipped in it before planting, will secure them from fly attack for at least two years; and this is resulting in a staggering increase of daffodils for sale in a market which is already overloaded. Glasshouse lettuce, unless very skilfully grown, has in the past suffered much from botrytis, a fungus which rots the leaves and stem; now a dust has been produced which can result in a 100 per cent cut of a crop instead of, perhaps, 70 per cent. Rosewarne, among its other activities, is engaged in the conquest of downy mildew on anemones, a disease which attacks large quantities of plants every season and which prevents anemones, as a precautionary measure, being grown in the same ground more than once in every seven years. From the scientist’s point of view this would be a conquest worth achieving and hence a mammoth effort is being made to do so; but here again a victory for the scientist means a bell tolling for the grower. ‘You know,’ said a backroom boy to me gleefully, ‘when we succeed . . . anemones won’t be worth growing in Cornwall, they’ll be so easy!’

Of course, the claims of the scientists do not always prosper in practice, and this adds to the grower’s bewilderment. The trade papers bellow with wares of hybrid names promising myself and my colleagues a grower’s paradise, luring us to buy concoctions that are found wanting within the year, leaving us with half-filled tins. During the battle of the bulb fly the scientists produced a smelly dust which, they assured us in extravagant language, would kill the menace if dusted over the bulb meadows at fortnightly intervals during April and May, making five applications in all. I bought the dust together with an expensive dusting machine which hitched weightily on my back and was operated by my hand pumping a lever, energetically as if I were a boxer pommelling an opponent. April and May was potato time so I had to be up at dawn marching over the dewfilled meadows with the smelly dust spoiling the sweet scented air, exhausted by the energy involved and in any case sceptical whether the effort would be worth the result. It was not. I conscientiously performed my duties for two seasons, then discovered the whole idea had been discarded as worthless by the scientists, leaving me with memories of ruined early mornings, a dusting machine which is now rusted with disuse, and a sack of the smelly dust which seems too expensive to throw away.

Growers, like punters, are gullible and are only too anxious to believe that these dangling promises will provide the profits which are so elusive; hence the chain of scientists, manufacturers and horticultural merchants exercise the same hypnotism as Littlewoods. One autumn I decided to grow spring onions and I had gone through the preliminaries of preparing the ground and sowing the expensive seed when I was advised to use a pre-emergence weed killer. This tempting concoction would spare me the task of weeding throughout the winter and assure a bumper crop at harvest time; and all I had to do, so I was told, was to spray the ground a couple of days before the spring onions were likely to emerge. The timing was important and so was the weather. By leaving the spraying to the last possible moment, I would kill the maximum number of weed seedlings which had grown faster than the spring onions; on the other hand, according to my directions, the weather had to be dry and the sun hot – as if I were able to arrange these factors as easily as opening the weedkiller tin. I scratched the ground daily until I saw the seeds had germinated, then looked up at the sky, decided it was going to be fine, and brought out the sprayer. Unfortunately the weather took no heed of the manufacturer’s directions and within a few hours there was a sharp heavy shower; and the spray instead of staying on the surface was washed into the ground – and that was the end of my spring onions.

Some sprays are so dangerous that the operator must wear a spaceman’s suit when using them. Some, drifting on the wind from a neighbour’s field, creep through the open windows of greenhouses and destroy the tomato plants. I have used a spray to kill greenfly on lettuce, and have killed both the lettuce and the greenfly. A spray to kill aphis on brussel sprouts was being spread from an aeroplane when some of it wafted into a country lane bordered with blackberries – police set up road blocks at each end of the lane while the blackberry bushes were forthwith cut down, carted away and burnt. I have never used slug pellets since a friend’s dog, finding them scattered in his garden, ate them as if they were biscuits, and died. One season we had a plague of mice eating the anemone buds and, bemoaning the fact to a merchant, I was recommended a liquid which, when sprayed on the ground, killed the mice when they walked on it. ‘What about other animals?’ I asked, ‘Cats or dogs, I mean.’

‘Oh them,’ said the merchant, as if nothing else mattered so long as the mice were killed, ‘it wouldn’t do them any good either.’

A time came when we had a greenhouse at Minack and the first crop we grew were April sweet peas which had to be dusted with a special powder throughout the winter as a protection against mildew. Sweet pea plants need endless attention, and during the countless days we spent in the greenhouse Monty used to be our companion. We were amused by his presence and innocent that he ran any risk; and indeed we considered the greenhouse his playground so that when the weather was stormy we put him inside so that he could exercise in comfort. One March day we had driven over to Newquay and did not return until seven in the evening when, as so often happened, the tiger-like face of Monty staring from the bedroom window welcomed the lights of the car as we came up the lane to the cottage.

Inside we gave him the usual vociferous greeting and Jeannie, anxious to appease the long absence, doled out the boiled fish on his plate. He made to go towards it, halted, began to stagger, then fell down. Jeannie’s back was turned and I alone was the witness. ‘Jeannie!’ I shouted as if I were calling against the wind, ‘what’s happened to Monty? He’s had a stroke!’ Panic can easily seize me and as quickly be defeated, just as my temper can flare and fade. Here seemed the threatened instant of finality, the wink of the eyelid that makes the past unreal, love silenced, the agony of leaning on memories threaded like gossamer. And then, quite suddenly, I was calm again. Monty had got to his feet and was weaving towards the bedroom door, crying, and I bent down to hold him, then picked him up in my arms and saw that his eyes were glazed, unseeing and circling in their sockets, control abandoned. ‘I’ll get the vet,’ I said firmly, ‘if he’s in he’ll be here inside the hour. I’ll get the Land Rover out and go up to the farm and telephone. I’ll put Monty on the bed and you do what you can to keep him quiet.’

Within the hour the vet was leaning over Monty, sounding him, taking his temperature, talking to him in a quiet Scots accent, and by his presence alone making us feel the worst was over. ‘His heart’s sound,’ he said, puzzled, ‘and I don’t see any sign that he’s had a stroke and yet . . .’ I suddenly thought of the sweet peas and the mildew powder, and I ran out to fetch the tin. There was no mention of poison on the label but when the vet read the analysis he put out his hand and stroked Monty. ‘Here’s the trouble, old chap,’ he said, ‘you’ve been going into the greenhouse and the dust has been brushing off the plants into your fur, and after all these months you’ve absorbed it into your body. You’ve got a bad dose of slow poisoning . . . that’s what’s wrong with you!’

The treatment was bicarbonate of soda every four hours for the next forty-eight and Jeannie and I took it in turns to watch through the night. On the second night, it was shortly before dawn, Jeannie, who was in charge of the difficult task of emptying the spoonful of bicarbonate down his throat, was just about to go off to sleep after giving him his dose, leaving me awake in a chair beside him, when there was a noise from the bed on which Monty was lying. We looked at each other. The crisis was over. The noise from the bed was a purr.

I am, then, suspicious of those who feed from the struggles of growers. Conventionality provides them with a mask of altruism towards us, but it is a thin mask. So vast is the industry that now exists on the perimeter of the once basic one of growing, so many are the ramifications of subsidised bodies that thrive on horticultural research, so huge is the number of men and women whose salaries depend on these sources, that the role of the grower has become that of the guinea pig – the purpose of his existence belongs to others.