A Gull on the Roof (16 page)

‘We’ll wait a few days,’ I said to Tommy, ‘no use murdering them.’

I was not, however, as calm as I appeared, for I too was gripped again with potato fever. It was a deliciously buoyant sensation. Here we were on the edge of retrieving our misfortunes of the flower season. The precious prospect of hitting the jackpot lay ahead, and if I did not wish to appear anxious to Tommy, it certainly did not matter how I appeared to Jeannie. ‘Come on,’ I said after Tommy had gone home, ‘let’s go and explore on our own.’ It was a gesture of curiosity, not of expectation and we completed the formality without disappointment. ‘Another week,’ I said, ‘at least another week.’ And in that week Jeannie, Monty and I gained a companion who, when I started to dig, followed me up and down the row wagging his tail. His name was Gold Bounty.

Gold Bounty was a friendly black greyhound, and his arrival at Minack occurred in this way. A few years before, the White City had offered Jeannie a greyhound to run in her name, and invited us down to the kennels at Barnet to meet it. We were introduced to Gold Bounty who greeted us with such affection, so trustingly muzzled his face in Jeannie’s hand, that she wanted to take him back to Mortlake immediately. We were limited, however, to occasional visits to the kennels, but there came a time when he knew us so well that he began to whimper and yelp in excitement as soon as he heard our voices in the corridor.

One day the manager said to us laughingly: ‘Well, I can see that Bounty’s going to have a good home when he retires.’ We, too, laughed in reply. It was a long time off before such a thing would happen. Horizons away, and in the meantime he had races to win. This public side of his life began in sensational fashion; sensational at any rate, and delightful, for Jeannie and myself. When Gold Bounty made his debut, we were having dinner in the glass-fronted terrace of the stadium with Don Iddon, the outspoken columnist of the
Daily Mail,
and A. P. Herbert, whose devotion to greyhound racing and football pools has brought him much frustration; and Jeannie was relaxing in the glow of being an owner whose dog was about to race, a situation which has its hazards, as she was later to find out.

For instance, the most unlikely people would sidle up to her: ‘See Bounty’s running tonight. What’s his chances?’ The craving for inside knowledge nurtured the delusion that the owner possessed that knowledge. Thus if Jeannie appeared in a mood of optimism, that mood would be responsible for a flow of whispers: ‘Bounty’s going to win tonight.’ If she shrugged her shoulders and said she did not know, the converse was concluded. Unfortunately, she never possessed any secret information, and thus she deserved neither the smiles nor the black looks which followed her imaginary tips.

Indeed as Gold Bounty pursued his career he became a source of embarassment to ourselves, for loyalty demanded we should back him but circumstances often made us forget; and the times we forgot were those when it seemed he most often won. But there was one awful occasion when he and another greyhound which had been presented to Jeannie called Corporal Mackay, both won on the same night, at combined odds of one hundred and fifty to one. We had not a penny on either. The trainer had told us before racing began that neither had the ghost of a chance.

Gold Bounty’s first appearance resulted in a win by a short head after a photo finish. He came up round the last bend from fourth place in the red jacket of Trap Number One, and pipped the favourites on the post. We were hysterical. Alan Herbert shouted like a busker, Don Iddon filled our glasses with champagne, Jeannie stood on a chair yelling: ‘Bounty! Bounty! Well done Bounty!’ and I shook the hands of everyone at the next table, all of whom were strangers. The custom is for the greyhounds filling the first three places to be walked round the arena after each race; and Jeannie and I ran down to the rails to see Gold Bounty as he passed. He was a beautiful-looking greyhound, not very big, and he walked as if on springs. ‘Well done, Bounty!’ we called. For a moment he looked in our direction, then barked. ‘Oh what a good dog am I,’ he seemed to be saying. He raced at the White City for four years; always genuine and intelligent, he was loved by the crowd, and many a night I have heard the arena filled with the roar: ‘Bounty! Bounty! Come on Bounty!’

Then came the letter from the manager of one of the kennels saying it was time for Bounty to retire. Would we have him? Otherwise he would have to be put to sleep since he was not of high enough class to be of use at stud. Of course we agreed immediately to do so. At the same time we realised we were heading for trouble. Track greyhounds, being trained all their lives to chase the electric hare, had also the habit of chasing any other small animal on four legs. How could we keep Bounty and Monty apart?

We shut our minds to this problem in the excitement of his impending arrival, and when one late afternoon he was led from the guard’s van of the Cornish Riviera we were waiting on the Penzance platform to give him a hero’s welcome. He greeted us as old friends, barking excitedly and leaping up on his hind legs. He was home. We had not let him down. He was going to have a wonderful time!

But as soon as we returned to the cottage we were faced with the reality of the problem with which we had landed ourselves. Monty, whom we had left shut up indoors, met us with an enraged glare from the window; Bounty saw him and started to bark furiously.

‘Look,’ I said to Jeannie, ‘I’ll take Bounty for a walk while you try and make peace with Monty.’

Monty never took any notice of a dog if it passed by him when he was on his own; but if we were about his back would arch, his fur rise, and then wham! . . . he would attack. In his own mind I suppose he was protecting us, but his ferocious behaviour was certainly startling to his victims. Jeannie’s cousin once called unexpectedly and arrived at the door holding a terrier in her arms. In an instant Monty was at it, and five minutes later the wretched girl herself was having first aid in the bathroom. The same kind of episode happened time and time again, and the odd thing was this . . . whenever we rushed out to warn any visitor with a dog, we were always greeted with the same lofty remark: ‘Our dog never goes for cats . . . you don’t have to worry.’

We, therefore, knew from the beginning that Bounty would never be able to stay with us, although in the moment of welcome we had conveniently forgotten the fact. Our idea was to keep him at Minack for a few days and then to find him a permanent home; sensible but unwise, because every minute he spent with us our hearts became more emotionally involved. He was my shadow. He trotted trustingly at my heels when I took him for long walks, and when I started to shovel out the potatoes he followed me up the meadow, foot by foot, as if he thought his presence was essential. I would return to the cottage with him gambolling beside me, there to find poor old Monty sitting as usual in the window with fire in his eyes.

The nights were chaotic. Our intention had been for Bounty to use the potato hut as a kennel while Monty continued his custom of sleeping on the bed. But Bounty tore at the door and the walls and howled like a hyena until we were driven to silencing him by despatching Monty into the sitting room, and bringing Bounty into the bedroom. A sliding door divided the enemies and rather than risk one of them slipping through when we opened it, we hopped in and out of the windows. Such a strain could hardly last and its end was sudden.

Jeannie had gone up to the farm to fetch the milk and had taken Bounty with her, and I had stayed behind to weed the garden. Suddenly I saw her running towards me up the lane. She was alone. ‘It’s happened!’ she cried out as she reached me. ‘What’s happened?’ I said, and saw her anguish.

‘Bounty’s killed a cat and he let out that awful howl as they do when they catch the hare!’

It’s a bloodcurdling sound, a siren of the jungle. ‘He must go! He must go!’ It was an old cat, a dying one at that, and the farmer who owned it eased our minds by saying he would have had to kill it in any case. But we could not keep Bounty any longer. The honeymoon of his retirement was over.

That afternoon we put him in the back of the Land Rover and set off to find him a home. He thought it great fun. He put his paws on the back of my seat and pushed a wet nose in my neck; and he barked out of the sheer joy of barking. As for ourselves, we were remembering the roars of the White City crowds: ‘Bounty! Bounty! Come on Bounty!’ – and comparing this memory with the incongruous present; and as happens when one deceives an animal we felt humiliated.

Yet we knew we could find him a good home in St Buryan parish, for it has an ancient tradition of coursing and of breeding greyhound champions of the show ring. And we did. Trethewey looked at Gold Bounty with a grin on his face, and scratched his head in wonderment that such a beautiful dog was being given to him. He had three other greyhounds on his farm, and five minutes was enough to see that he was gentle with them; so we said goodbye to old Bounty feeling assured that he had many years of happiness before him. And it seemed we were right when, a few weeks later, we called and found Bounty curled up in the best armchair by the fire.

The next time I saw Trethewey was three months later when he knocked at the door of the cottage. ‘Hello, Mr Trethewey,’ I said cheerfully, ‘how’s Bounty?’ He looked at me quietly for a moment. ‘He’s dead,’ he said, ‘he died last night of a heart attack.’

We ached our way once again through the potato harvest, and when it was all over and we had counted our takings, we were pleased by the immediate present, but disturbed by the future. We had had a good crop and fair prices, but viewed with dispassion we had to admit the outgoings were proving greater than income. The bliss of the first excursion was being tempered by the knowledge that we had embroiled ourselves in a business that had a considerable appetite. The element of wage-paying demanded capital expenditure in order to provide it; thus experience at Minack was beginning to teach us the truth of Parkinson’s Law.

If, for instance, you have an acre of land, you may be able to crop it yourself but the work is so exacting and returns so limited that you are certain to decide that you must increase your turnover by cropping more land; and this means you must have labour to help you. More land means more fertilisers, seeds, equipment and general overhead expenses all of which, added to the wage you now have to pay, cancel out the value of the increased turnover. An itch thereupon gets in your mind which worries you into believing that yet more capital expenditure is the answer. If you buy a motor hoe and so lessen the use of the hand hoe, if you buy a motor scythe and dispense with the old-fashioned hand one, if you buy a rotovator and give up digging the ground, if you buy . . . all these purchases, you say, will increase efficiency, spare labour for extra work, and thus bring nearer the elusive margin of profit.

You find the magic result does not materialise, yet the nagging thought develops that you have not been bold enough. What about a greenhouse? And if one greenhouse does not earn what you expect, what about two? Perhaps on the other hand you ought to increase your stock of bulbs, or have a new packing shed, or would it be better to invest in cloches? The ideas for expenditure roll out of your mind as if on a conveyor belt, and you lie awake at night and pace your room in the morning, tussling as to which idea to put into practice.

Funds meanwhile are falling low and instalment commitments increasing. A compelling force drives you to give up your intention of having a new suit in favour of the fertilisers the advisory officer urges you to spread over the bulb ground. Fertilisers, you argue, will increase next year’s turnover while a new suit will rest most of the time in the cupboard. You realise by now that you are the victim of your own enthusiasm. So much money has been spent, so much energy expended, that retreat means disaster, and you are drawn by a magnet into a future which is grey with doubt. If the daffodils bloom in profusion, if they do not coincide with a glut, if the violets or anemones are not killed by frost, if it is not a bumper year for everyone else’s tomatoes, if the potato plants are not blackened by gales, if their harvest does not have to compete with shiploads of foreign imports . . . then you may expect the year’s endeavour to earn you a living.

Market garden efficiency cannot be classified in the same way as a factory. For one thing there is no roof to protect you from the weather; for another you cannot put your goods in a stockroom until there is a demand for their sale because your goods begin to die after they are gathered; and you cannot possibly draw up an accurate budget as you have little idea of what your output may be, and not the faintest notion what price your goods will fetch. Placid-looking market gardeners, therefore, are inveterate gamblers and their life is not, as it appears, a plodding one. It dwells in high excitement, and the charm of it is that the grey doubts of the future are invariably quelled by titillating prospects of a new season.

Meanwhile we devised means to live cheaply, and in such efforts the countryman has the advantage over the townsman. Appearances, unless you leave the compound, do not matter and thus old clothes which, in a city, would have been pushed into retirement, continue in rough service for year after year. Rents are a fraction in comparison and nagging bills such as those for warming the house in winter can be tempered by taking a walk and collecting your own logs. You can have your own fresh eggs and by growing vegetables you can spend the townsman’s contribution to the greengrocer on something else.

Jeannie and I now began to wonder whether we could catch our own fish in some manner which would not necessitate my dangling a rod for hour after hour when I should be doing something else. I considered the merits of the kite which is used by offshore lighthouse keepers. This kite with baited hook attached is set off before the wind until it is far enough away to be pulled down into the sea, and then is reeled into the rocks beneath the lighthouse. Such a kite is independent of which way the wind is blowing but obviously, if I were to use a kite, I would only be able to launch it when the wind was blowing off the land.