Until recently, I lived in a flat in Camden Town, above the betting shop, with my husband and three-year-old son. There were rats on the fire escape and junkies on the street. Sometimes, the junkies offered me childcare tips: “Don’t feed him lollies or he’ll end up fat, like you.” Was this man a contributor to Mumsnet? Was he right? I had a list of things I did not like about London, and it grew longer. I did not like the nearest primary school, for the children had upside-down smiles. I did not like the fuggy heat, or the air pollution, or the children who threw eggs at my window. I did not like the butcher who charged me £110 for a joint of beef.
I daydreamed about Muswell Hill, but I couldn’t afford it. Eventually, I had a real dream that Muswell Hill was a walled city on an escarpment overlooking London; a fortress that I could circle on the 134 bus but not enter. Even my subconscious knew it was over. We were moving to the country.
My husband suggested Oxfordshire and we went to see a house in a silent golden village. It’s pretty, I said, but who would I talk to? Somerset, then, he said, and we walked around a second silent, golden village, and I felt that I was already dead. I would be a ghostly parody of a reader of Sunday supplements, and I would turn to drink.
So, I said: Cornwall. Plenty of writers live in Cornwall. Howard Jacobson used to live in Boscastle and he liked it. John le Carré has a secret lair between Treen and Lamorna, where Straw Dogs – a cautionary tale warning against moving to the country – was filmed.
It had nothing to do with Poldark. The happiest memories of my childhood are here, which is why I came back. My mother and I walked across the fields to Sennen Cove 30 years ago, and I thought I had found paradise.
We sold the Camden flat and moved to a tumble-down house on the edge of Newlyn, the fishing port next to Penzance. It has a garden full of orange flowers that want to enter the house; my husband says we need a goat, or a scythe, which he will master topless. We don’t own the house. It needs works to get a mortgage, and these works will happen “drekly”. This is Cornish for “directly”, and it is at best a joke and at worst a taunt. It appears on mugs promoting the glories of Cornwall. We may never own the house, but I don’t mind, because no Cornish person would buy it, so I suppose we will stay here. It isn’t practical.
There are two Cornwalls: the Cornwall of my fantasies and the Cornwall that is. I walk between them, because I don’t know anything yet, and I feel unstable.
The Cornwall of my fantasies is cliff walking, sea swimming and weather. I love weather, and London has almost no weather any more; the buildings forbid it.
The Cornwall that is has all these, but now that I live here, I have less time for them, because I must work. I write in the Morrab Library, a Victorian villa in Penzance, which specialises in Cornish history and detective fiction, and I read the history of Penzance. Things happen here. News arrives – of tobacco and victories at sea. It takes my mind off the fact that I know, already, that I do not belong here. I have not belonged before, but it didn’t matter then; no one belongs in London, and so everyone does. It is a community of not belonging.
People are friendly; when my boy locked himself in a toilet, a woman scaled the walls to release him. But the river Tamar is a psychic border and we are “emmets”. It means incomers or “ants”. Our fantasy of Cornwall can ruin theirs; and seasonal emmets are terrible drivers, it is true. On these roads, tractor versus campervan means stalemate. I have been told, on the bus, by an ancient female: “These people ruin our holidays and I don’t care who knows it.” I hummed sympathy in my London accent, but I knew she meant me. It is high summer now and the atmosphere has changed. It is angrier. It feels more like London.
Otherwise, I know that umbrellas do not work here, because the rain does not go from up to down. It engulfs you. I have learned that weather reports are unreliable, and that when it is sunny, you must jump in the sea. I have also learned that people stand for public office to publicise their pet shops on the ballot papers, and I find this charming. I have been a Londoner all my life, but I never felt I lived in England until now.
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