A Drake at the Door (10 page)

We planned a two-pronged attack, outdoors and under cover. We would, for instance, make use of every piece of land we had, and because of the tractor there would be no delay in preparing it. We would grow all the usual flowers but on a far bigger scale. A quarter of an acre of calendula, an acre of anemones, three quarters of an acre of wallflowers, thousands of violets, tons of daffodils, beds and beds of winter-flowering stock, and a mass of Blue Bird forget-me-nots.

The physical problem of planting all these was, of course, formidable. But by the end of the summer the land was filled with our potential income; and most important of all, the two mobile greenhouses were erected. These were our pride.

They looked like miniature glass aircraft hangars on wheels, small wheels which rested on rails that enabled them, in our particular case, to be moved over two sites; and this meant we were able to grow two crops at the same time, one already covered, one waiting to be covered.

They appeared perilously exposed to the weather. They stood in the field bordering the lane and although to the west they had the protection of the wood, they were certain to be hit by the northerly and easterly and the terrible fierceness of the southerly. I do not believe I would have ordered them if I had thought twice, if I had not been flushed by the mood of abandon which struck me after the tractor overturned. I would have been too frightened. I would have seen disaster ahead. The gales were waiting. The hands of the wind would find the gaps by the wheels and lift them up. How could I expect such a greenhouse to stand up to a fury which could obliterate an outside crop in a night? After all, even our hundred-foot greenhouse, firmly based on foundations, shivered when the gales blew.

We were, however, so stimulated by the pattern that lay ahead that we were able to dispense with such anticipatory fears. We at last were upsetting the much-used curriculum of growing potatoes. For year after year we had grown potatoes and the luck was always against us. Gales had blasted them, droughts had hit them, frosts had turned them into pulp, gluts had ruined the price. There never was a year when Jeannie and I lolled in the pleasure of a great success. The early potato harvest from the cliffs was economically dead. We had been trying to live on a dying tradition.

Instead we would now become big tomato growers. The tedious labour of the cliffs would be replaced by the more gentle task of tending the tomato plants in the greenhouses. We had already proved we had a market on the doorstep and so there was no expense of transport. Our summer income seemed assured.

We then had to decide what flowers we should grow in the greenhouses during the winter; and we received the usual bewildering assortment of advice. Every bulb and flower in the catalogue was deemed suitable for our attention; and we pored over the lists, paper and pencil in hand, calculating possible financial returns based on the figures of the previous year’s market reports.

Jeannie was very earnest. She drew diagrams, for instance, of pre-cooled daffodil bulbs represented by dots, hundreds of little dots representing the bulbs in a bed, then a blank space for a path, and more hundreds of little dots. And she finally added them all up and divided by twelve, and announced how many bunches there would be to pick. There were simpler ways of calculating, but Jeannie obstinately preferred this visual method.

At last we decided that in one of the mobiles we would have a slow-moving harvest, forget-me-nots that would bring us an income January onwards; and in the other we would have a quick, all in one week, harvest of Wedgewood iris, which would rush into readiness at the end of March. And in the big static house we would grow the Giant Pacific polyanthus.

Thus out plans were laid for the distant spring and the summer to follow. The money was there in the growing crops, but meanwhile we had to live. We also had to cope with the vast amount of work without employing extra labour, extra labour which was needed, but which we could not afford. In time, if all went well and the crops mastered the winter, we would have to find someone to help with the harvests. It would be pleasant to do so. The money would be coming in so that it would not hurt paying out. The hurt was now during the long wait.

There was a struggle every week to pay Geoffrey’s and Jane’s wages. Saturday morning would arrive and I would count the notes and hand them over; and then I would return to Jeannie and say that I envied them as wage-earners. Jeannie and I had aimed at the splendours of individualism without computing what such freedom demands. Personal freedom is a word, not a fact. Personal freedom creates its own chains. We were expanding, but the expansion had burdened us with more commitments; expansion was inescapable if we were to keep on Geoffrey and Jane and lift our own lives above those of peasants. We had to spend in order to remain free.

But the wonder of our life was that we never wished to shift its base. There in the lonely cottage where the sea murmured through the windows, we had the exquisite knowledge that if the map of the world had been open to us and we could go where we chose, money no object, we would have lived nowhere else. We were the lucky ones. We had an environment which cushioned us against the worries which burrow and sap confidence. We were living the life of our choice and Minack was our armour. We were not looking out at the horizon like others, searching for a life that is beyond reach. We did not have to say we would find happiness if we did this or did that, having to brighten the greyness of the passing years by praying that one day a dream would be fulfilled. We had our dream around us; and if there were times when the conventional stresses of living jabbed at us, challenging the sincerity of our happiness, we could not for long remain depressed. For we only had the trouble in hand to face.

We had a particular crisis that summer which required all our resources to defeat. It was a prolonged crisis which went on for week after week. Every day we waited anxiously for the postman to come across the fields; and when the expected letter arrived I would have to spend hours writing convincing answers to the questions the letter contained. I replied to a score of such letters that summer; and when in the end the crisis was over, when on a glorious August morning a letter arrived to tell us we could have a measure of financial help until the promised harvest came next spring, I rushed out to Geoffrey and Jane to give them the good news.

This gesture was, of course, only a reflex of my own relief. As each week we struggled to pay their wages, I had identified them in my mind as part of our struggle. This is what happens in a small business. I, for instance, faced with my anxiety to pay the wages, had become so consumed with my efforts to do so, that I found myself believing that Geoffrey and Jane had shared my anxiety. Hence, now that Jeannie and I had won a reprieve, I had an irresistible desire that they should share our delight. It was an indulgence. It was also a thankfulness that now I would be able to look at them on a Saturday morning without grudging the wage they deserved.

First I saw Geoffrey, who was digging a ditch in the wood, and when I shouted to him that everything was now all right, he paused for a moment resting on his shovel. Geoffrey has a kind face. He has blue eyes. He is very strong, and he is perhaps the best handyman I have ever known. He could be a plumber or a mason, and memories of his art remain tangible at Minack to this day. He looked at me, half smiling, and he obviously could not understand what it was I was so excited about. I passed on to Jane.

She was thinning lettuce plants in the stable meadow. As usual she was barefooted, looking like some Continental peasant child, uncomplicated, utterly free, the wonderful fair hair touching her shoulders.

‘Jane!’ I shouted, ‘we’re all right!’

It was such conceit on my part that I could believe she should understand my enthusiasm. Why did I expect so? She was only sixteen and a half. And yet she had that kind of enthusiasm which flared such sincerity that both Jeannie and I felt its benefit. Jane, both Jeannie and I felt, was part of us. And Jeannie and Jane talked to each other as if there were no difference in their ages. For both, life was a gay excitement; and for me who saw them together, it was wondrous to see two different generations together as if passing time did not exist.

‘Jane! Isn’t it wonderful?’

Her response to good news, even if she did not know its significance, was usually effervescent. If I had a letter containing some pleasant information and I told her, I could rely on her to react happily despite the fact that I had not given her the details of its contents. She was by nature an enthusiast. She would, for instance, appear as pleased as we were when we received news that prices for our flowers had gone up. It was part of the fun to tell her. She never failed to add to it.

And yet on this particular day she was disappointing me. She did not look me in the face, and to my surprise there was no smile to show she was glad. She stared at the ground, scratching the soil with the hoe within an inch or two of her bare feet. Of course she did not know the extent of the tremendous relief in my mind, and so I was plainly expecting too much from her. But always before there had been the telepathy conveying the mood of our excitement. It was obviously not working on this occasion.

Suddenly she looked up, but instead of meeting my eyes she looked to one side. Something was wrong. Whenever Jane was confused her cheeks became like red berries and her eyes wandered in every direction except straight in front of her.

‘I’ve been meaning to tell you, Mr Tangye,’ and in a flash I knew my high excitement was about to disappear, ‘I’m leaving.’

I have sensed sometimes that someone who is working for me is thinking of going. There is a look about them, a slight casualness, a confidence towards me that they did not previously display. I am aware they are saying to themselves: ‘I’ve been here long enough. It’s time to move on.’ It’s a dying relationship between us, a product of ennui, the job has become dulled by the routine. I am therefore prepared.

But I was not by Jane.

‘Say that again.’ It was I who had now become flushed. I was thinking purely of myself. The thrill of overcoming our problem, the moment of celebration, was to be dissipated. Instead of relaxing for the first day in weeks, the weariness of the burden we had carried clear of our shoulders, here quickly was another to take its place.

‘You see, Mr Tangye,’ she said, and she had suddenly become animated, a bubbling enthusiasm which certainly had nothing to do with Minack, ‘Mum and I are going to Turkey.’

This was a surprise.

‘Yes,’ she said, and because I was showing interest her confidence was returning, ‘We’re going in a van with two friends, and camping all the way, and when we get to Turkey we’re going to live near Ankara, and grow our own vegetables, and spend our time digging for buried treasure.’

The programme was rushed out breathlessly and I would have laughed had it not been Jane who had spoken. True she used to have wild enthusiasms, but she was also so sensible. I respected her opinions. If she told me that a certain section of our work could be improved this way or that, I would generally have reason to agree with her. She thought out her work. She had a sense of responsibility. Had we gone away at any time and left her in charge I would never have worried. She was deliciously reliable.

‘I really don’t see how you can live on vegetables,’ I said, and there was a note of condescension in my voice, ‘after all, they take time to grow and what do you do in the meantime?’

My condescension was not as real as it sounded. I had a certain understanding for such a crazy idea. I had had so many myself which had been laughed at by outsiders. I was once fired as a columnist of a daily newspaper on a Wednesday, only to announce on the Thursday that I had resigned in order to go round the world. My friends at the time thought it was a complicated alibi to explain my dismissal. I knew better. I had an excuse to force myself into doing what I had always wanted to do.

Jane’s mind would always range widely. She could not always thin lettuces or pinch out tomatoes or enjoy the leisurely pleasure of a peasant girl. She was too intelligent ever to be cushioned against conflict. And her mother felt the same; she was alert to the knowledge that Jane looked for adventure however small might be its canvas. Why not give her a chance for a real adventure?

‘Oh, we’ve planned how to live in the meantime.’ She was returning my condescension in a way I had learned to associate with her. When in doubt she was most superior. She set out to swipe her opponent out of the arena by the sheer force of her character. She
knew.
The opponent didn’t.

‘I won’t be going immediately,’ she said encouragingly, ‘but I wanted you to know in good time. I’m awfully sorry . . .’

I returned to the cottage and told Jeannie the news. At first she laughed at my solemn face and said the whole idea was absurd and that it would never materialise.

‘You know Jane!’

But when I described the way Jane had told me, how it seemed to be different from her other enthusiasms that had melted away, she began to share my concern. After all Jane had given in her notice. That was final enough; and she had too cool an intellect to do that unless she and her mother had made their final decision. And as we discussed it, both Jeannie and I became vexed. The day’s pleasure was being sidetracked. Instead of celebrating our personal achievement, we were talking about Jane. Who should we get to take her place? Did we want a girl or should we have a boy to help Geoffrey? The tedious worries of an employer, bitty and sterile. Round and round the same subject and going nowhere. She won’t leave, she will. Jane, Jane, Jane . . .

Then we asked ourselves why we were so concerned whether Jane stayed or left. She was certainly thorough but she had not the knowledge to make her indispensable. We could easily find someone to take her place. So why waste time talking about her?

It was her attitude to life that we wanted to keep. Young as she was, she was in tune with us. An essence of happiness is to wake up in the morning and look forward to seeing the people with whom you are going to work. If you are at ease with them, if they are friends and not robots, if they do not irritate you, if they are not envious, then another dimension enters your life. Time does not drag. Evenings are not wasted worrying about the mishaps of the day. And if you are small employers the weight of responsibility is lightened, the enthusiasm of cooperation becoming as important as the technical ability to do the job.