Up With the Larks (12 page)

I'd like to say that my first thoughts are for the two old folk
whose letter I'd lost. What if it's a longed-for missive from a
friend, a son or daughter or an ancient relative? What if it's a
notification of a huge Premium Bond win? I'd not looked at
the letter at all as I was too busy ogling them. What if in my
carelessness I've destroyed what for them would have been a
life-changing letter?

I don't think any of those thoughts, I'm ashamed to say. Or
not until later. Right now I'm thinking,
Oh hell, there goes my job.

I'm balancing on a jagged rock trying to reach the letter
which is bobbing about in the foamy waves. The tide is coming
in fast and the water is quite deep in places. I'm aware of the
Grenvilles hanging over the sea wall and calling out something
to me. I can't hear a word they're saying. A wave brings the
letter closer and I make a grab for it, nearly falling in. The
shouts from the sea wall are becoming more hysterical.

I'm soaked from the turbulence but I don't care. I want that
letter. Now I hear someone else, a younger voice shouting and
I look up to see the young lads I'd passed earlier. 'Try this,'
one of them yells as he throws down his net.

It lands near enough for me to grab the pole without falling
into the water. I make repeated stabs at the letter but I miss
it each time, causing a crescendo of a groan in my audience.
It's still maddingly near and at least it hasn't been swept out
to sea but I'm getting angry now and feel like drowning the
damn thing instead of saving it. And then another wave crashes
in and brings the letter with it, leaving it stranded high, but
unfortunately not dry, on the rock behind me as the water
recedes.

There's an almighty cheer from the sea wall, where at least
a dozen people have gathered. I try a heroic leap from my rock
to the other one and topple off, scratching my hands badly.
There's a collective gasp from the crowd but I've grabbed the
letter, pulled myself up before anyone can try to help. I stand
on the rock, waving the soggy paper like a flag. Another cheer
from the crowd and I bow modestly before stiffly, inelegantly,
clamouring back over the jagged rocks to hand the dripping
mess of paper to the Grenvilles.

Jennifer and Archie – we're on first name terms now – ply
me with hot coffee, wash out the scratches on my hand and
give me a pair of baggy but clean, track suit bottoms to put
on while they dry my trousers. The letter which I'd so heroically
saved is drying on a radiator. It is an advertisement for
loft insulation.

'Never mind, dear,' Jennifer says when we discover this fact.
'It was a brave, if foolhardy, thing to do.'

Archie echoes the bravery bit. 'We'll write a personal letter
to the post office, commending your integrity and sense of
duty. They should be proud to have women like you working
for the Royal Mail.'

Three days later, I kill a cat. Not intentionally, of course not.
The cat runs out into the road and dives under the wheels of
my van like the most maniacal of suicide bombers.

I stop and rush to the poor thing but it is dead even before
I get there. A slight trickle of blood is running from its furry
mouth and its spine is twisted oddly. It is ginger coloured with
a white tip on its tail and a white face. I recognize this cat: it's
Marmalade.

By now three or four people have gathered around me and
the dead animal. There is a lot of tut-tutting and shaking of
heads but no one is making a move to notify the cat's owners.
I'm trembling all over, upset and near tears.

'Please,' I say to the woman nearest me. 'Can you tell the
Johnson's – you know, Adam and Elizabeth, they're called, their
house is across the road there – can you tell them what
happened?'

No one moves.

'It's their cat,' I explain, wondering why I have to do so. In
such a small hamlet, everyone knows what animal belongs to
whom.

Still there is no volunteer.

I'm becoming agitated. 'Right, I'll do it myself.' I stand up,
holding poor dead Marmalade.

'Take it easy, maid,' a white-haired man leaning on a cane
hobbles up to me, pats me on the shoulder. 'Ain't no rush.'

'But there is. They've got kids, it's their cat, we've got to tell
them before they come out and see the poor mangled thing.
They'll be shattered.'

The man holds me back as I start for the house, 'They be
gone.'

A woman with a scarf knotted under her chin continues,
'Gone Up Country, back to their own home. Don't live hereabouts,
not except for holidays.'

'I know that but they were here over Christmas and into
the New Year. They wouldn't have gone without their cat.'

The two begin talking at once. They tell me that Elizabeth,
Adam and the twins left a few days ago but had to leave
Marmalade as the cat had disappeared.

'Looked all over fer it. Kids howling an' bawling, Ma and
Pa frantic-like. Finally had to go without the cat. Asked us to
keep watch fer it.'

We stand there for a moment in silence, me still holding the
stiffening creature. There is blood on my Royal Mail fleece.
Finally I say, 'I'd better phone them, let them know. Does
anyone have their number?'

The woman with the scarf does as she looks after the house
while it's empty and cleans it before and after their visits. She
comes back with the number and with an old towel. 'To wrap
it in,' she says.

I assume by this that I am to take the cat away, as no one
else offers to dispose of it. So I wrap poor Marmalade in the
towel, an old thin beach towel with a faded palm tree on it,
and place him with the post in the back of the van.

It isn't far from Morranport so I drive back to use Nell's
phone. I have my mobile with me but there's no signal
anywhere around here. Nell is sympathetic and insists on
seeing the dead cat, no doubt checking that I've got it right,
that the animal really is dead and not moribund. I tell her
how awful I feel. I've never hit anything, not even a squirrel
or a vole, before.

'Not your fault, maid.'

'I know, but I still feel awful. I suppose I'll have to be the
one to bury it too. But I'd better ring the owners first.'

I gabble my apologies on the phone to Elizabeth Johnson
as I break the news about Marmalade. She is upset but tells
me I'm not to blame. Marmalade never was a cat for looking
both ways before he crossed a road.

I say, 'Your children will be devastated.'

'Oh my God, the kids! Yes, they will, they will.'

'I'm so sorry,' I say for the hundredth time.

'Oh dear.' She sounds more distraught now than she did
when I first told her the cat was dead. 'They'll never forgive
us if they can't have a funeral.'

'What?'

'Oh, you know, a proper burial, funeral hymns, prayers,
speeches, that sort of thing. The kids love it. They had a big
one for the gerbil and one for the terrapin too.'

'Oh. Right.'

'Look . . . sorry, I didn't get your name?'

Just call me Mrs Postie,
I nearly say but I don't think she'd get
irony right now. 'Tessa Hainsworth.'

'Look, Tessa, I can't deprive the children of their funeral.
Could you do us a big favour, and hold the cat until we get
down to Cornwall again?'

I think fast. The next school holiday is not until the end of
February and it's only the beginning of January. For a hysterical
few seconds I imagine myself driving around with a dead,
decomposing ginger cat in my van for six or seven weeks.
Things like this never happen to Postman Pat, that's for sure.

Elizabeth goes on, 'If you can just put it in your freezer . . . ?'

I am so relieved by this idea that I agree. Somehow, goodness
knows how, I find myself saying, 'Fine, we'll keep it for
you. No problem.'

When I hang up Nell looks at me, a hard look. I stare back.

'Well, maid,' she says. 'Your freezer or mine?'

We both grin then start to giggle and soon we're laughing
so hard we can hardly wrap hapless Marmalade in a plastic bag
before placing him at the bottom of the big shop freezer in
the back of the post office.

'Fish in the fridge, cat in the freezer – I'm starting to get
the hang of this job, Nell,' I sing out as I leave the post office.

''Bout time,' she hollers back with a cheery wave.

I finally forget about the cat when I go back to my beat,
for I'm now on my way to Trescatho, a place of cob, stone
and slate, accessible only by a narrow lane with high hedgerows
on either side.

The fine but cold January weather has held; the sky is blue
glass and the sea is jade green. I park the van by a gate leading
into a field where early Cornish lambs are skipping in the grass
while their mothers, Dorset ewes, graze alongside them. I lean
on the gate a few moments and gaze at the sea in the distance,
the animals not far from me. They gaze back with momentary
interest then return to their munching, oblivious to some starlings
quarrelling amongst themselves in the nearby trees until
they fly away and the quiet returns.

As usual, I'm overwhelmed by the stillness. Perhaps more
than anything it is something I'm aware of in Cornwall, something
I'm awed by. I guess it's those years of living in cities
where you live with noise, all day and all night. Here, I seem
to go from pocket to pocket of calm, quiet, broken only by
the beautiful warble of a wren, or the singing of skylarks.

I remember the first time I heard the larks, as I was parked
one morning at Creek, having a last look at the estuary before
carrying on my round. I heard what I thought was ethereal music,
lovely sounds I couldn't recognize, coming from somewhere in
the sky. Looking up, I saw tiny bird-shapes and realized the
songs were coming from them.

I sat there for ages, joyous to have this blessing of birdsong,
yet sad that the traffic, the noise of London had prevented
me from hearing it for all those long years.

Here in Trescatho, the silence is even more intense. Every
time I come, I feel I've stepped back hundreds of years in
time. The village seems isolated and cut off from the 21st
century. Its position helps to create this feeling, with the high
cliffs going down to the sea on one side and the precipitous
hill falling to the river on the other. There's only one narrow
road leading to it and it's a cul de sac which ends at the village.
Once it was a lively community, with an inn, a blacksmiths, a
tiny shop and even a one-room village school. Now there are
only a cluster of stone houses.

It seems a million miles from anywhere, this place, and the
fact that it's so quiet, so empty of people, adds to the feeling
of timelessness. Even the stone barns alongside the farmyard
seem frozen in the past. There are no signs of animals, yet
hay and straw are stacked up in an open-ended shed. I haven't
seen a tractor but there's an ancient plough in the corner. I
keep expecting to see the oxen that pull it.

Yet this doesn't seem like a ghost town. I know these houses
aren't empty; I see names on the post I deliver and smoke
rising from chimneys, smoke from wood-burners and the old
Agas and Rayburns I sometimes glimpse through half-curtained
windows. I drop the post in letterboxes, in sheds,
in boxes hidden from the rain, and even into a few front
porches with doors left ajar for me. But I've never seen
another soul. Well, only one and he was so odd I'm beginning
to wonder if I imagined it.

It was the first time I'd delivered the post to Trescatho, early
one foggy morning. A lone sheepdog somewhere behind the
farm at the edge of the hamlet barked once then stopped, and
an owl hooted loudly, making me jump. I had to walk down
a narrow footpath of old cobbles, grass growing in between,
to a nest of cottages clustered around a tiny square, a postage
stamp village green. I kept expecting to hear the sound of
horses' hooves on the cobbles.

The mist dipped in and out between the houses and a full
moon still shone through the dark and fog and the coming
dawn. I felt like I had stumbled across Brigadoon, the sleeping
town said to wake and appear only once every hundred years.
If a man in a shepherd's smock and a woman in a crinoline
and bonnet had appeared in one of the doorways I'd not have
been the least surprised but I sure as hell yelped when someone
came up behind me and put a heavy hand on my shoulder.

An apologetic voice said, 'Sorry, miss, if I frightened you.'

Turning, I saw a man towering over me and I do mean
towering. He must have been well over six and a half feet tall,
probably more. He had thick, long, black hair down to his
shoulders and he held one hand in front of his mouth even
when he talked. I murmured something back but noticed his
other hand was still on my shoulder.

We stood there for a few moments and my fear was coming
back despite the civility in his voice. He seemed in no hurry
to speak so I stammered, 'Uh, can I, uh, help you? Do you
have a letter you want me to take?'

This flustered him. 'Oh no, no no no, thank 'ee anyway.
It's just that I'm needing to get by. Bit of a hurry, y'see.' He
nodded towards the cluster of houses ahead of us, shrouded
in the heavy mist. A light shone from one of them but it was
eerily muted, looking more like candlelight or a gas lamp than
electricity.

I suddenly realized that because the path was so narrow,
there was no way he could get past me unless I squeezed myself
up against one of the stone garden walls. This I did and he
hurried by, finally dropping his hand from my shoulder and
the other one from his mouth. It was then I had the second
shock of the day. His two eye teeth were as long as fangs. He
looked like every picture I'd ever seen of imaginary werewolves.

I don't know if I yelped again; I hope I didn't. I do know
I stood there frozen with fear as I watched that huge lumbering
creature disappear into the house with the light. Then I
delivered the post – luckily there was none for that particular
house – and scurried out of the village as fast as my little
postie legs could take me.