A Week in Coverack

I am in the middle of a week spent in Coverack, a small fishing village on the Lizard Peninsula, in Cornwall. Seven nights and days is by far the longest continuous time I’ve stayed in the village since my mum moved 12 miles away to Helston early in the 2000's. I’m staying in a small holiday rental, 18 miles from my home in Falmouth, attractive not only because of the out-of-season price but for its location opposite the beach and above the Harbour Lights café where my mum worked as a waitress for several consecutive summers. The village is full of memories so strong to me, so loud in my head, so warm in my heart, that I find it hard to believe that those I meet on my brief and blustery walks can’t feel them too just through being near to me.

Eating lunch in the café, which has changed hands several times since my mum’s boss sold up about a decade ago I envisage the horror on the face of the customer who surely must never have been able to eat steak again after the resident cat jumped up on the table and was sick all over his plate. Having left school at 14 my mum worried about her intellectual capabilities. But she was quick witted, funny and reflective and ‘told a good story’ and there were many such tales. One of my personal favourites was the one about the ‘sunbathers’ and the seagulls. Each night at the end of service – usually between 10pm -11pm in the height of the summer season – the seagulls would begin to circle above the beach in noisy anticipation, just three or four strides and a drop of 25 feet or so from the café’s outdoor tables. When my mum was on duty she, or the owner-come-chef, were usually the ones to carry the dustbin full of the day’s scraps – the concealed remains of greasy breakfasts, meat and pastry from lunchtime pasties, sticky crumbs from afternoon cream teas, fish and steak supper left-overs and all the rest – across the road, before balancing the bin on the railings and tipping it over. Within minutes the food would be devoured. One particular evening the schoolgirl on her first summer job sharing the shift with my mum offered to undertake the task. Hearing a high-pitched scream my mum ran out to find her co-worker ashen faced and shaking as a fifty-something man and a woman in her early twenties hastily climbed the stone steps from the beach. At this point in the story my mum, and whoever she was telling it to, would be weeping with laughter as she described the attire (day beach-wear) and accessories (food of various varieties) of the very, very angry man and his shy companion. The image of the ice-cream cone still stuck to the side of the poor woman’s head was what always did it for me. Despite his initial bluster the man had no response to the café owner’s ‘I’m terribly sorry sir but we didn’t expect anyone to be sunbathing at this time of night’, and after cleaning themselves up as best they could in the toilets with the help of a borrowed towel each they slipped quietly away.  

That same road, that I’m looking out on as I type this, runs the length of the village and although not possible for two cars to pass in some places is the main route in and out of Coverack. When, as a small family, we moved here in May 1978 the weather was mild and the sea mostly calm and it was not until the following winter that my dad began to, most morning, walk with me to the college bus. He was worried that I might be swept over the rails. I can’t remember if I walked alone after his death on the last day of January 1979, the memories of grief much more vivid than the practicalities of daily life. But given mum’s slight stature (small but strong (in all ways) evidenced not least by her later adventures with the scrap bin) I assume that I did. During this time I had a boyfriend (later to become my first husband) who surprised me one weekend with an unexpected visit when he drove down from London in the Reliant Robin he was entitled to drive with his motorbike licence. I’m not sure I’ve ever admitted to anyone before how many Friday afternoons following this I lingered at Coverack bus stop in the hope that his little red car might expectantly appear. It never did again though.

My dear parents now reside together in the graveyard 150 yards away from Harbour Lights café and holiday flat. When dad died we did not enquire about the status of the plot and mum and I both assumed that her wish to be buried with him would not pose a problem. So after she died in 2010 I spent a few anxious days whilst the gravedigger checked the records. Before he did he apparently said to the funeral director ‘well if my dad dug the grave there won’t be a problem.’ I am grateful that it was indeed his father who had that responsibility.

Following my dad’s death and my subsequent move away my mum lived in a number of different rental properties in Coverack, the most beautiful of which was at the top of Sunny Corner Lane (yes honestly that is its’ name). The small roughly converted barn has now been replaced with a much smarter, but, at least as far as I’m concerned, less characterful bijoux dwelling. There are stories to tell here too, including the time mum had to deal with the generation of grass snakes that nested in her boiler cupboard and her commitment to tending the garden (the outside space about three times bigger than the inside) meaning that two days after a lumpectomy she was out with her gardening tools. In addition to the main building – one room encompassing sleeping, sitting and cooking space – there was a thin conservatory running the length of the original build which housed the bathroom (backing onto the rocky, wild back garden less preferable to the snakes in cooler weather), an additional ‘kitchen’ sink, and a coat and shoe rack. Her home had no external lock which didn’t matter much for many of mum’s neighbours didn’t bother with the ones they had.  There were a couple of garden chairs in the conservatory and enough room for two to sit, if a little squashed up, side-by-side. From here there was a wonderful view encompassing the across-the-lane terraced garden spaces belonging to the Cornish cottages and occasion larger properties on Sunny Corner and further away the sea which sparkles on sunny days and roars on rougher ones.  The conservatory, which is really too posh a term for this part of my mum’s somewhat unique dwelling was a favourite sitting place of my late (second) husband John. During our visits he would spend hours here reading, sometimes writing a little, and looking out to sea. There’s a seagull story to tell here too; there often is in Cornwall. This part of the property which was obviously built on had a corrugated plastic roof (I said it wasn’t posh) which gathered moss and dirt which my mum would regularly hose off. It also attracted the birds, especially one seagull pair who, without fail, started their daily exploration of the roof at first light each morning. We tolerated them and more, for Fred and Ginger, as John christened them, felt like members of the family.

Although the sea is wild this visit and the temperature unusually cold for Cornwall, it’s been largely dry. My last visit – timed to coincide with the anniversaries of my parents’ deaths, 33 years apart but a day next to each other – took place in the rain on the day when the main road was undergoing re-tarmacing following the devastation done to Coverack in the flash flood last July. Despite the soaking I received I left the village, as I always do, emotionally revitalised. The end of this trip, I know, will be no different.