Little People

A story from my youth

St Ives.

I’m 16 and have just arrived here to reconnect with the ‘happy place’ of my childhood.

The place I’d spent many a glorious summer with my mum, brother and grandparents.

Once more, will I wake to gull cry, mosey along piers captivated by shoals of eel that move in mysterious synchronicity as single dark entity. 

Once more, will I peruse rickety stands of postcards, shops that sell slabs of gaudy peppermint fudge and tan tea towels with pasty recipes upon them.

Once more, will I stagger down steep, twisted steps dripping with hanging baskets. I’ll gaze upon cottages cutely adorned with cockleshells embedded in their frontage like pretty adult sandcastles.

But the main thing my teenage heart pines for, is an octogenarian lady who had lived in the property opposite our holiday let.

Ann Phillips.

It sounds silly, but for me, Ann had been the highlight of that fortnight, every single year.

I’m not entirely sure how we’d come to know her.  I can only assume the connection had come about through my grandma, an engaging chatterbox who would swallow the smiles of strangers with her own like a busy carpet sweeper.

Every day at some point, Ann had appeared, a winning brown mouse of a woman, swinging open her robust, stable-style split door, some seaside saloon. She’d beckon us over cautiously the way Mr Beaver did in ‘The Lion, the witch and the wardrobe’, her cherry paintwork giving way to a beaded curtain that looked like a wall of Floella Benjamin’s hair.

“Those, are to keep the flies out”

Mum had said practically. But to four year old me, it had been a veil of sensory pleasure, yielding like an upturned rainstick to my curious touch.

Ann was slight and slim, each part of her, a pinch, slant or point, cheek bones sitting as proud rounded teaspoon ends on her face as grey-brown hair floated about her in ethereal wisps.

I remembered her soft scouse accent. She and her husband had owned a large department store in Liverpool. When he had died, she had sold up and moved to the Cornish coast with her son, Brian, a forty something singleton who looked like a ginger Captain Birdseye.

So, what was it about this woman I’d so adored?

In short, she’d captured the one part of a little girl that remains held hostage until the spell of childhood is broken.

That’s right, my imagination.

Ann had filled my mind with enchanting stories of the fairies and piskies that lived in the tin mines near St Austell.

Sometimes, I hadn’t understood, such was the fragility of her whisper, and she had leaned in like a good witch entrusting a secret.

“We call them…..the little people”

She’d said with authority one day, looking around incase anyone should hear.

“And they don’t like to be seen. Sometimes you can tell if they’ve visited…… maybe a pen is in the wrong place, a piece of fruit is gone….”

My green eyes had saucered as I’d surveyed the fruit bowl on her table where Snow White apples wore arches of sun as scant capes and grapes lazed as though reclining on an invisible chaise longue.

“Not everyone can see them…”

She’d said, her voice trailing off with mystery.

“They only show themselves to those who believe. But I know you do…..”

I’d nodded enthusiastically, my pudding bowl hair cut flipping and flopping with excitement. Then to my surprise and delight, she’d produced a gleaming silver necklace.

“For you”

She’d said, holding it to the light, smiling.

“It’s a Cornish piskie. Whenever you wear it my dear, you will have the luck of the fairies”

I’d slipped the necklace on, fastening the fiddly clasp with my clumsy fingers, staring in wonder at this funny little man in a pointy hat around my neck.

And oh! How I’d treasured it back then….

I snapped myself out of my rosy nostalgia.

For this was not 1979, the year my 3 year old brother had seen the sea for the first time and ran towards it fearlessly, finally launching himself boldly into its sapphire abyss.

This was not 1982, the year I’d swam so far I’d been sure I’d spotted a shark fin, frightened my 8 year old self to death and raced back to shore, heart thudding like an urgent door knock in my chest.

This was not 1984, the year I’d worn my red pedal pushers, green sun visor and spent two weeks trying to impress the guy who worked for United Beach Missions and looked like Limahl.

This, was 1990.

A new decade.

And…..

This trip was different.

The cottage was different.

“We couldn’t get the old one, it was booked up”

My mum isn’t with us and my Grandad sadly died in 1985.

Instead, this holiday is billed as either ‘a treat for you and your brother’ - two teenagers who haven’t had a holiday since 1984 - or a ‘break for your mum’ depending on who appears most in need of charity.

Here we are, two warring adolescents, with my Aunty Margaret, my Grandma and her sister Grace. A trio of bippetty bippetty boo,  fairy godmothering both need and wishes, walking precarious line as guardians, housekeepers and providers of entertainment whilst being mindful of a teenage need for space.

Grandma and Grace fuss about proudly, a couple of sitcom Mollie Sugdens whilst middle aged Aunty Margaret adopts a slightly edgier persona as though to ram home to us the 20 year age gap.

I love the sound of them chatting in the kitchen. Their northern voices infuse me like the soaring warbles of birds. They dart and interject as they ponder such dealbreakers as whether there’s a cheese grater, how low the water pressure will be and if the house has an ant problem.

As they prepare the evening meal, I enjoy the clang of china, the tidal crash of cutlery. Plates are piled high with ham, boiled eggs, beetroot, pickles, iceberg lettuce and Heinz salad cream.

I decide to busy myself too, lining up my Kellogg’s variety pack choices for the days ahead like a pro, digging the camaraderie with the elders of the female pack.

“I’m going to go and visit Ann tomorrow”

I announce.

“Ann Philips?”

says Grandma.

“Ooh, she’ll like that. She thought the absolute world of you!”

She adds, snapping a stick of celery.

“She’s in a care home now you know.”

I inform them.

“I went to her house this afternoon and it was someone new living there. So, I found Brian at the arcade and he told me.”

I say, recalling my ‘Carrie doesn’t live here anymore’ moment earlier that day with a smartly dressed frosty woman in her thirties.

“Say hello from me”

Grandma says cheerily as she slices a boiled egg with one of those wire strung gadgets that are always so satisfying to use, like mini guillotines.

After tea, I stroll the familiar streets, the back alleys no one really cares about but that sit in at the back of my brain’s store cupboard like bags of puy lentils, a nourishing mundane.

I think of the time we witnessed a huge seagull attacking a cat over ‘rights’ to a discarded fish skin, Grandma desperately trying to steer us away from the ensuing  bloodbath as my brother and I stood entranced by the spectacle of ferocity, way better than any natural history predator stalk-out on the telly.

The round squat dustbins that dotted these alleys have now been replaced by imposing wheeled monstrosities blocking out views with their harsh angles and towering size.

And the more I amble, the more I see that in just six years so much has altered beyond recognition.

I hear fewer Cornish accents, see fewer old people. It no longer appears a haven for the retired or side hustlers, but rather a money magnet for greedy property developers, snapping up each picturesque fisherman’s cottage to chunk off into loft apartments and garden flats like processing pineapples for fruit salad.

The quaint ice cream parlour isn’t the same either. I nip inside hoping to have one of the banana splits Grandma and I used to eat from those long shallow dishes that look like gondolas, or perhaps a knickerbocker glory like my mum would choose, served in a tall sundae glass. Both are no longer available. Instead, they offer the sort of ice cream now common place, screaming its brazen Americana in brownie pieces and cubed fudge. Ice cream that comes in garish cardboard cups with neon green plastic scoops.

I visit the amusement arcade, remembering the coin slot helicopter ride once there. Its exterior was the kind of metallic finish that looked like it housed millions of particles of glitter. I’d put some coins in and up it would climb; ‘pisha, pisha, pisha’! Way better than the lame ride-ons that mimicked cartoon characters or cars. Why would anyone choose to move backwards and forwards, when you could truly lift off the ground and fly?

Wandering St Ives in 1990, I decide, is like walking into someone’s else’s interpretation of my recollections, a shit ‘Crime Watch’ reconstruction. Someone has tried to recreate something fabulous and failed miserably.

“No!”

I want to tell the director.

“The wishing well wasn’t filled in with concrete!…..it was awash with copper halfpennies dark as treacle.”

I want to stress how the beach front arcade sold Baby William dolls in match boxes, novelty erasers with the scent of chocolate biscuits, King Cones. That you could buy sticky red spiders that climbed down walls, roll up green edged beach mats that smelled of wet dog, and risqué pens you could twist that made men and women in beach wear become naked.

But the world moves on, swift and unsentimental, a baddie in a car chase. It doesn’t look back.

Only its passengers do.

Ann won’t have changed, I reassure myself as I drift to sleep. Cause old people don’t, do they? They just get to a point of wearing cardigans, buying ready salted crisps, using biscuit barrels and then…..they die.

Now I know she is still alive, I smile, contemplating our meeting the following day.

Tomorrow soon comes and I find myself at a care home the other side of town. Some subtropical Shady Pines with south facing fireside chairs and ubiquitous dishes of pot potpourri evoking dried blackberries and pencil sharpenings.

“She’ll be pleased to see you”

chirps a care assistant, leading me upstairs. One of those beige teddy bear sort of women, blonde, plump and sturdy.

“She doesn’t get many visitors. But don’t be surprised if she doesn’t know who you are. She doesn’t remember much these days”

And there she is, before me, my dear Ann! All but skin and bone like an over barbecued chicken, strands of grey feathering her face, an intricate nest.

She takes my hand as though a gold coin she’s picked up, marvelling at my youth. My pudgy dimpled 16 year old hand, is to her, a freshly pressed out cookie. I look at hers too. Veins and age spots snaking and leoparding her aged skin like a jungle pattern on an antique plate. Her rings sit loose and heavy on her tiny fingers.

“It’s me Julie”

I say

“Do you remember?”

She’s grinning at me but it’s a vacant smile. Her face is a derelict house of open window eyes.

I try again.

“You might remember my grandad. Frank!”

I offer.

After all they were similar in age.

“Oh yes!”

She says brightly with mischief.

“I remember your grandad!”

She launches into a lively rant about some hard drinking lothario who was clearly not my quiet and mild mannered grandfather. I am a little taken a back, but keep trying.

“I used to come and see you every year. I stayed at the cottage over the road. You used to buy me Palma Violet perfume and once, you gave me a pixie necklace.”

I say hopefully.

“Oh yes…. Susie! You had a sister called Amy didn’t you?”

She offers.

“No”

I say bluntly. My lip is trembling. I’m not sure why it hurts so much. That this woman I saw for a mere 2 weeks out of 52 cannot remember me. That she confuses me with others.

Why do I care so much? She isn’t a relative. I’ve not seen her for 6 whole years. As a teenager I cannot fully comprehend the nature of possible dementia.

Teddy bear lady steps in, possibly picking up on my feelings of rejection.

“I think she had a lot of families she used to befriend,  y’know, who came on their holidays.  She liked children. That’s what her son said”

If this is meant to make me feel better, it doesn’t.

Yeah, why should she remember me?

I muse.

Who the fuck was I? Another tourist passing through town like a fleeting rainbow.

Who was I, when there were probably dozens of little girls she bought necklaces for?

And who - just who - was my lovely, patient grandad amongst an endless parade of old fellas treading the pier like the boards of a travelling theatre show, smoking pipes and haggling for fresh crab.

My eyes teary, I chat a little longer.

About the weather.

About the cheery primrose colour of the walls.

About the lilac scented stock that infuses the room to the point it is suffocating me with its heaviness.

The sorts of things strangers discuss. Openers.

Was this what life was like for care home residents? A collection of shallow statements arranged politely as plumped up cushions on a chair?

I suddenly have a flash back.

I’m nine years old. In the school toilets. Sprout coloured paper towels littering the floor.

The cubicles smell different to our bathroom at home. In fact, our toilet at home doesn’t smell at all.

It’s not a terrible stench, just the slightly off odour of being used by too many children, urine masked by cleaning fluid.

I’m getting off the seat to flush and something falls from me.

I peer into the porcelain bowl and see to my despair that it’s the necklace Ann had given to me.

My nine year old mind panics and I flush the loo, knee jerk reaction kind of thing. After all, I can’t stick my hand down a dirty school toilet, can I?

And then I realise, it’s gone.

My lucky chain and pendant irretrievably lost to another place I can never get it back from. I redden, my eyes brimming.

And here I am now in 1990, doing the same. Losing another piece of that beautiful story and wanting to cry.

As I leave the care home, I ponder…..

Because I was not her ‘only one’, does it make it all less special?

Because she does not remember me the way I remember her, does it make our shared experience any less meaningful?

And which is worse, to have a brain that systematically empties you of memories like the contents of a hoover bag, or my own naïve one that strives to etch in stone what can only ever be playfully chalked upon?

As I head towards the cottage, gulping back tears in the July sun, I notice sweet old ladies talking to wide eyed little girls.

I decide that in the warmth of the touch we shared today, her shaky hand clasping my own tightly, something survived.

The necklace may be gone.

Her memories of me may be dead.

But somewhere in the present, between us both - and in the wider world - love and magic, are very much alive.