Free A Gull on the Roof by Derek Tangye

nostalgia for the life he represented. We were enjoying a honeymoon with the primitive and tasks that could become monotonous – fetching the water from the stream, filling the paraffin lamp, cooking, cleaning, lighting the stove – possessed the brisk pleasure of the unusual. When I first knew Jeannie she could not even boil potatoes, and the first meal she gave me consisted of cinder-burnt chops due to the fact that she was unaware that frying required fat. She now had a file bulky with recipes and it was not long before she added two more – those for Cornish cream and home-made bread. She collected four pints of milk from the farm, poured it into a bowl and allowed it to settle for a few hours. Then she put the bowl on the edge of the stove where there was a gentle warmth and left it overnight. On the first occasion she tried this out I watched her, as excited as a girl going to a first night, skim off a thick layer of yellowy cream and then, with the confident air of a farmer’s wife, serve me with thunder and lightning – treacle and Cornish cream on slices of bread. A few weeks later I had a pain in my side and I said to Jeannie, ‘I believe I’ve got appendicitis.’ I was nervous of going to the doctor and put off doing so until the pain or ‘feeling’ became so persistent that I had no alternative but to make an appointment. As I entered the surgery I visioned the hospital, the operation, the convalescence which would keep me incapacitated throughout the potato season. The doctor examined me and poked my side, then asked, ‘Have you been eating a lot of Cornish cream since you came here?’ And with his question the pain disappeared.
    Jeannie’s mother sent the recipe for the bread and it was such a success that we never bought a shop loaf again. She makes four one-pound loaves out of three pounds of wholemeal flour and three teaspoonfuls of dried yeast. While the yeast is dissolving in a cup of warm water, she mixes half the flour, a tablespoonful of brown sugar and one of coarse salt in a warmed basin. To this she adds the dissolved yeast, about one and a half pints of warm water, mixes it all into a batter and leaves it on the back of the stove for fifteen minutes. The rest of the flour is then emptied into the mixture and kneaded for five or ten minutes – after which the dough is cut into four sections, put into warmed, greased bread tins and left to rise on the back of the stove until the dough has doubled in size. Finally the tins go into a piping hot oven for about three-quarters of an hour, and the sweet smell of baking fills the room.
    My mother had arrived to stay when we dug our first potatoes. She came loaded with gifts for the cottage including dust cloths, saucepans, detergents, a pair of sheets, and a water filter. My mother was never thrusting either with her views or with her presents, and when out of a packing case she produced the water filter, she very softly said, ‘I was thinking of the tadpoles, dear.’
    It was on the first evening of her stay that she saw the square figure of John leading his horse and cart, piled high with potato chips, past the cottage. She was irritated that he should be meeting with potato success while we were sitting back and waiting, and she urged that we were not showing enough confidence in our meadows. I explained that we had planted our seed later than he had done, that our meadows in potato parlance were considered later than his, and that in any case Tommy had warned us to wait another week. My mother, however, had the gambling instinct inherent within her and she insisted that no harm would be done if I collected the shovel and the three of us went down the cliff to try a few plants.
    The bright light of day had gone from the cliff when we reached it and the sun was dipping to the sea on the other side of the Penwith peninsula. The shadows of the rocks were enjoying their brief passage of life before dark, and the sea was dotted with the waking