From Hereabout Hill

Foreword

Writers and miners have something in common, I think. Daily we search for and hope to find the rich seams we need. Some writers discover a seam so productive that they simply keep digging the way the seam leads them. My problem is that I am too easily bored. I find a rich seam, dig like crazy, and then move on to a new seam, a different seam. I may return to the old one later, I often do.

This somewhat impatient and immature way of mining for my stories is reflected in this collection of tales. And there is a good reason for it, a good excuse, anyway. All of these stories, except one, have been written at the behest of someone else, a friend or an editor. So I’ve been digging away contentedly in my seam, when some story mining expert (editor) comes up with a proposal that I might write a short story about such and such. ‘Stop your digging there,’ she says. ‘Look over there and follow that seam. It looks promising.’ Whether I do as I’m told entirely depends upon who’s doing the telling.

It was Miriam Hodgson who so often came up with proposals that I should explore new areas. That is why this book is dedicated to her – one of the truly great story mining experts. She knows where the gold runs deep and true, how a writer gets at it, and she’s good on the smelting too. She likes these stories, which makes me hope and believe that you will too.

Michael Morpurgo

June 2000

PS    ‘From Hereabout Hill’ was written by a dear friend and wonderful poet, Seàn Rafferty, who lived in a cottage on the farm until his death in 1993. The ‘Hereabout Hill’ he writes of was his hill and is my hill, the place I live, the place I write my stories.

The Giant’s Necklace

So, a mining story to start with. For many years I used to go every summer to Zennor. I read Cornish legends, researched the often tragic history of tin mining in Penwith, wandered the wild moors above Zennor Churchtown. I wrote a book of five short stories called The White Horse of Zennor. This is the first.

The necklace stretched from one end of the kitchen table to the other, around the sugar bowl at the far end and back again, stopping only a few inches short of the toaster. The discovery on the beach of a length of abandoned fishing line draped with seaweed had first suggested the idea to Cherry; and every day of the holiday since then had been spent in one single-minded pursuit, the creation of a necklace of glistening pink cowrie shells. She had sworn to herself and to everyone else that the necklace would not be complete until it reached the toaster; and when Cherry vowed she would do something, she invariably did it.

Cherry was the youngest in a family of older brothers, four of them, who had teased her relentlessly since the day she was born, eleven years before. She referred to them as ‘the four mistakes’, for it was a family joke that each son had been an attempt to produce a daughter. To their huge delight Cherry reacted passionately to any slight or insult whether intended or not. Their particular targets were her size, which was diminutive compared with theirs, and her dark flashing eyes that could wither with one scornful look, her ‘zapping’ look, they called it. Although the teasing was interminable it was rarely hurtful, nor was it intended to be, for her brothers adored her; and she knew it.

Cherry was poring over her necklace, still in her dressing gown. Breakfast had just been cleared away and she was alone with her mother. She fingered the shells lightly, turning them gently until the entire necklace lay flat with the rounded pink of the shells all uppermost. Then she bent down and breathed on each of them in turn, polishing them carefully with a napkin.

‘There’s still the sea in them,’ she said to no one in particular. ‘You can still smell it, and I washed them and washed them, you know.’

‘You’ve only got today, Cherry,’ said her mother coming over to the table and putting an arm round her. ‘Just today, that’s all. We’re off back home tomorrow morning first thing. Why don’t you call it a day, dear? You’ve been at it every day – you must be tired of it by now. There’s no need to go on, you know. We all think it’s a fine necklace and quite long enough. It’s long enough surely?’

Cherry shook her head slowly. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Only that little bit left to do and then it’ll be finished.’

‘But they’ll take hours to collect, dear,’ her mother said weakly, recognising and at the same time respecting her daughter’s persistence.

‘Only a few hours,’ said Cherry, bending over, her brows furrowing critically as she inspected a flaw in one of her shells, ‘that’s all it’ll take. D’you know, there are five thousand, three hundred and twenty-five shells in my necklace already? I counted them, so I know.’

‘Isn’t that enough, Cherry?’ her mother said desperately.

‘No,’ said Cherry. ‘I said I’d reach the toaster, and I’m going to reach the toaster.’

Her mother turned away to continue the drying-up.

‘Well, I can’t spend all day on the beach today, Cherry,’ she said. ‘If you haven’t finished by the time we come away, I’ll have to leave you there. We’ve got to pack up and tidy the house – there’ll be no time in the morning.’

‘I’ll be all right,’ said Cherry, cocking her head on one side to view the necklace from a different angle. ‘There’s never been a necklace like this before, not in all the world. I’m sure there hasn’t.’ And then, ‘You can leave me there, Mum, and I’ll walk back. It’s only a mile or so along the cliff path and half a mile back across the fields. I’ve done it before on my own. It’s not far.’

There was a thundering on the stairs and a sudden rude invasion of the kitchen. Cherry was surrounded by her four brothers who leant over the table in mock appreciation of her necklace.

‘Ooh, pretty.’

‘Do they come in other colours? I mean, pink’s not my colour.’

‘Who’s it for? An elephant?’

‘It’s for a giant,’ said Cherry. ‘It’s a giant’s necklace, and it’s still not big enough.’

It was the perfect answer, an answer she knew would send her brothers into fits of laughter. She loved to make them laugh at her and could do it at the drop of a hat. Of course she no more believed in giants than they did, but if it tickled them pink to believe she did, then why not pretend?

She turned on them, fists flailing and chased them back up the stairs, her eyes burning with simulated fury. ‘Just ’cos you don’t believe in anything ’cept motorbikes and football and all that rubbish, just ’cos you’re great big, fat, ignorant pigs . . .’ She hurled insults up the stairs, and the worse the insult the more they loved it.

Boat Cove just below Zennor Head was the beach they had found and occupied. Every year for as long as Cherry could remember they had rented the same granite cottage, set back in the fields below the Eagle’s Nest and every year they came to the same beach because no one else did. In two weeks not another soul had ventured down the winding track through the bracken from the coastal path. It was a long climb down and a very much longer one up. The beach itself was almost hidden from the path that ran along the cliff top a hundred feet above. It was private and perfect and theirs. The boys swam in amongst the rocks, diving and snorkelling for hours on end. Her mother and father would sit side by side on stripey deck chairs. She would read endlessly and he would close his eyes against the sun and dream for hours on end.