Trenouth

by Bea Green

  Tony looked mortally offended. Elinor began to realise he had a substantial amount of professional pride and wasn’t going to find any derogatory reference to his profession amusing.

  ‘It’s all right to treat yourself now and again. I don’t recommend it routinely,’ he said finally, manfully keeping his ire in check.

  ‘I was only winding you up, Tony. I really don’t think you get my sense of humour. I’m happy to go to The Hut if you’ll join me,’ Elinor said lightly, trying to placate him.

  ‘I’m up for a laugh but not when it involves my job or things I care about,’ said Tony seriously, looking at her intently and not budging from the sensitive subject matter.

  There was an awkward pause where neither of them knew what to say.

  Avoiding the accusatory look in his eyes, Elinor punched him in the arm.

  ‘OK, OK! Sorry for casting doubt on your professionalism. Come on, Tony. Let’s go get some food before I pass out with hunger,’ she pleaded.

  All of a sudden Tony smiled at her with genuine amusement and Elinor felt the relief wash over her. She’d never have put Tony down as insecure or sensitive but she was seeing a new side to him today. However, his smile contained a wealth of warm emotion. Elinor thought it was like the sun breaking out from the cover of a grey cloud. His smile literally lit up his face. Tony, she decided, was an interesting paradox.

  They both started to paddle towards the shoreline, lazily letting the push of the waves give them impetus. Before long they’d started the walk back to their cars to get their wetsuits off and throw on some warm clothing, before rewarding themselves with a feast fit for a king as Elinor perceived it, her mouth salivating in anticipation.

  36

  The Hut turned out to be more of a metal and concrete shack than a hut. It was hidden out of sight down a path that ran from the car park and alongside the golf course. It was buried behind large overgrown gorse bushes in what was an obvious attempt by the golf club to hide an eyesore.

  Even with the numerous caravans that arrived here in the summer, The Hut had to win the most ugly habitation prize. It looked like a three-sided spaceship had landed in North Cornwall.

  The monstrosity was triangular in shape with thick, ugly concrete walls that stretched up to a flat, corrugated iron roof. The dull grey walls were pockmarked with holes and covered in graffiti. A black painted metal door was the entrance to this unprepossessing café. A plywood board with ‘The Hut’ painted on it in red letters was crudely attached above the black door with wire.

  Elinor was intrigued to think of its premise. Who had given this unsightly building planning permission and why? Had this ugly edifice been some kind of shelter or storage facility in World War Two? It certainly had the look of it.

  Elinor had already heard the tales of unexpected airborne enemy troop landings in Cornwall and of bombs raining down on areas like Bodmin during World War Two. Back then, beaches around the Cornish coastline were lined with mines, barbed wire, anti-tank obstacles and road blocks to prevent any enemy machinery gaining access further inland. Leo had told her how during the war his father had once seen a stray cow (which had accidently wandered onto Treyarnon beach) blow up before his very eyes. It had unfortunately trodden on a landmine.

  Ugly concrete observation posts had littered the Cornish coastline, but most had now been taken down, and although this hideous metal building might have had something to do with those dire days when function took priority over beauty, it was hard to understand why it was still standing today, an eyesore to anyone within its circumference.

  Tony was clearly not into the aesthetical side of things. He’d already disappeared into the interior of The Hut without a backward glance, the door swinging shut behind him with an ominous clunk.

  The smell of cooked bacon had briefly assailed Elinor’s nostrils when the door had opened, distracting her from her contemplation of the exterior. She’d been staring dazedly at the strange building, unable to make sense of its architecture, but the enticing allure of bacon finally won her over. She decided it was time to eat and pulled open the heavy door.

  She blinked under the harsh glare of a myriad of ceiling lights. The owner was clearly making up for the lack of daylight with excessive interior lighting. As her eyes grew accustomed to the brightness she saw that she was in a large room that was decorated with spartan taste. There were only three tables with an odd assortment of wooden chairs attached to them. The walls were painted white and at the back of the room there was what looked to be a hand-painted crude fresco of the ocean, with a couple of surfers riding the waves.

  Tony was already sprawled on one chair, flicking through a newspaper that he’d purloined from somewhere.

  ‘Tony, have you ordered breakfast?’

  Tony glanced up from the sports section of the newspaper.

  ‘No. It sometimes takes a while for them to make an appearance, I’m afraid. José and Elena, who run this place, have a temperamental relationship with the café. They’re from Andalucia in Spain and they work to their own timetable. They’re very laid-back as far as time and clients go. But they do make the best English breakfast in Cornwall.’

  Elinor groaned. Her stomach was starting to growl angrily with hunger.

  ‘Why on earth would you cook English breakfast when you’re Spanish?’ she wondered aloud.

  Tony shrugged.

  ‘It sells. That’s probably why. This place is never going to attract the Rick Stein clientele of Padstow.’

  Elinor waited impatiently for five minutes, and when nobody appeared she got up and walked through the beaded doorway at the end of the room, to see if she would be able to attract someone’s attention. If she waited much longer she felt she’d start to eat Tony’s newspaper or even Tony himself.

  She walked down the corridor and poked her head through the door at the end. A large, very clean and professional kitchen greeted her eyes. It had gleaming metallic surfaces, white tiles and not a crumb in sight.

  Hissing and bubbling on the top of the glistening oven was a large frying pan with several bits of bacon in it.

  Elinor quickly did a double take. She was struggling to believe what she was seeing.

  The bacon was burning.

  It was turning black at the edges and puffs of grey smoke were winding upwards as the oil spluttered and splattered out of the pan.

  Elinor gasped, sudden fear overwhelming her. Her first instinct was to call for Tony but the words wouldn’t come out of her mouth. She stood frozen in horror and in a blind panic for what seemed to her to be an age, watching helplessly as the plume of smoke thickened and the bacon slowly charred, turning into a black crisp.

  She heard a snore behind her. Turning around quickly, she saw a young man fast asleep on a chair. His head, with its white chef’s hat on, was leaning back against the wall and his mouth was wide open in an unattractive pose, making him look not unlike a dead fish.

  A second snore brought Elinor to her senses.

  Without a moment’s hesitation she ran across to the saucepan and switched off the gas. Lifting the pan away from the source of heat, she put it down on the metal surface, leaving the bacon to hiss loudly to itself as it congealed into a sticky burnt mass. She turned to face the man against the wall. Oblivious to any danger, he looked perfectly at peace with himself and the world.

  Angry, Elinor went over to him and shook his shoulder roughly.

  ‘Ay! Qué pasa? Qué pasa?’

  The man sat up, his eyes blurred and confused.

  ‘Your bacon was burning! You could’ve started a fire and burnt the place down!’ cried out Elinor irately, for once in her life willing herself to be a virago. This man deserved everything he had coming to him.

  ‘The bacon! Madre mia! The bacon!’ he yelled, jumping up and running to the stove.

  He stared at the black mass in dismay, putting both ha
nds up to his cheeks.

  ‘Ay, Dios!’

  ‘What on earth did you think you were doing falling asleep with the bacon frying?’

  The man looked at her in despair.

  ‘It has been a bad night for me. Me and my wife, we argue all night. She threatens to leave me and go back to Spain.’ He spread out his hands. ‘I’ve put all I have into this place and I can’t leave now.’

  Elinor watched him in bemusement.

  ‘So you’re José?’

  ‘Yes, I’m José Mendive. The best chef in Cornwall.’

  Elinor suddenly felt an irrational but overwhelming desire to laugh. A reaction to the fright she’d just had, no doubt.

  ‘Look, José. You have to pull yourself together. Drink a shitload of coffee or something. This can’t happen again or you really will lose everything you have. If things had got out of hand just now, how would you have explained it to an insurance company? I don’t think falling asleep after a row with your wife would pass muster with them somehow.’

  Crestfallen, José nodded miserably.

  ‘I know. It’s terrible. I am so sorry, Señora. Let me make it up to you. What is it you’re wanting today?’

  Again resisting the urge to laugh, Elinor looked sternly at him.

  ‘I’ve been surfing for a good hour and a half this morning and I’m famished. My friend Tony and I wanted a cooked English breakfast, which apparently you’re meant to do to perfection. So please, I beg of you, before any other surfers turn up, could you please cook us some breakfast without falling asleep again?’

  ‘Sí, sí. Of course. No problem. Go back through, Señora. I’ll have your breakfast done in twenty minutes, at most.’

  Elinor turned to leave but then a thought occurred to her. She looked up at the ceiling.

  ‘Hang on a minute! Don’t you even have a fire alarm in here?’ asked Elinor in consternation, her voice rising with disbelief as she examined the bare ceiling stretching to the other side of the room.

  José said nothing, watching her with an expression of ludicrous dismay on his face.

  ‘José, I don’t think it’s legal for you to be running a café without a fire alarm. For Pete’s sake, man, call the local fire station and ask them to install a fire alarm for you. Seriously. If you don’t do it, I’ll have to report you. This place is a potential death trap.’

  ‘What’s going on?’ asked Tony, sticking his head in the doorway and sniffing suspiciously at the smell of burnt bacon.

  José looked pleadingly at Elinor, begging her silently with his eyes not to tell Tony what had just happened.

  She hesitated before she spoke, choosing her words carefully. She had no desire to destroy José’s livelihood and she wasn’t sure Tony would be tolerant or accepting of what had just happened. He was far too puritanical.

  ‘Everything’s fine, Tony,’ she said a little bit too quickly, going over to the doorway and trying to push him gently back out into the corridor. ‘I distracted José with my chat and he managed to burn the bacon. He’s going to start again and says it won’t take long.’

  ‘He burnt the bacon? It looked to me like he’d thrown the whole lot into the fire. What on earth did you say to him?’

  A devilish imp of mischief danced at the corner of Elinor’s mind.

  ‘Well, you know, I was just trying to use my feminine charms to get him to hurry up and concentrate on our breakfasts. I think he was so overwhelmed, he lost track of what he was doing.’

  Tony wasn’t buying it. His eyes narrowed as he stared at her suspiciously, trying to fathom what had been going on and wondering why she was lying to him about it.

  ‘Sí, sí. Tony, it’s true. I promise. She’s a very beautiful woman. Just look at her. She took my breath away. I’m so ashamed. Me, a married man, should not be destraido like that. I am appalled. So ashamed,’ said José, entering into the discussion with all the exuberance of a true Spaniard. He hung his head down in shame, not meeting their eyes.

  José should go into amateur dramatics, thought Elinor, her lips twitching again as she watched him. He obviously had a hidden talent for this kind of thing.

  Tony looked thoroughly taken aback. After looking at the pair of them for a disbelieving minute he shrugged, giving up on trying to understand what was going on.

  ‘Right. I guess we’d better go back to our table, Elinor.’

  Elinor nodded, heaving a silent sigh of relief as they retreated back to their seats.

  Twenty minutes later they began to tuck into their English breakfast, presented free of charge by José who was now beaming from ear to ear, as though nothing untoward had happened that morning.

  As she ate, Elinor stared pensively at the mural at the other end of the room. It was very crude. She’d be able to do a much better job on it, she mused.

  The food was delicious and beautifully cooked, as Tony had said. Given the quality of the cooked breakfast it was a shame everything else fell below par. She thought José and Elena could do with some help to jazz the place up. The Hut might then attract some serious clientele, like the golfers from Trevose Golf Course.

  As she munched her way through her plate she started to visualise what she would do to the interior and exterior to make the place more appealing.

  She was still thinking about it when she walked to her car after breakfast.

  If Tony had noticed she was distracted he didn’t comment on it, which she appreciated. She felt very comfortable around him when he made so few demands on her but she sensed this was only a temporary arrangement. A partial truce...

  She wasn’t sure how long that would last. There was still a lot of unfinished business between them and she was sure Tony was just biding his time before he tried to change the boundaries in their relationship again.

  37

  ‘José, I could paint you a better mural for your restaurant,’ said Elinor, diplomatically avoiding calling The Hut a café, given that José had declared himself ‘the best chef in Cornwall’ at their last meeting.

  José looked dubious.

  ‘You’re an artist?’

  ‘Yes, I’m a good artist actually, José. Look at these photos of my work,’ said Elinor calmly, lifting up her mobile phone and passing it over. José studied the photos carefully and then passed the phone to his wife who was sitting next to him.

  It was a quiet morning at the café and they were all seated at one of the tables in the dining area of The Hut. Earlier that week, Elinor had arranged the meeting with José and Elena. She’d mentioned it cautiously, hoping desperately that they wouldn’t mind, as she had some creative ideas that she thought might be helpful to them regarding their business.

  Elena had been very open to having a chat with Elinor and full of enthusiasm to hear her ideas. After the embarrassment of being caught asleep in the kitchen, it was obvious José didn’t have the stomach to object.

  Elinor had developed an immediate liking for José’s wife when she met her.

  She discovered Elena was a vivacious character, open with her feelings and thoughts, so you always knew exactly where you stood with her. She looked very young. Elinor didn’t dare ask her age but Elena could’ve passed for a girl in her late teens.

  She was an elegant, pretty girl with a mass of thick, curly brown hair and enormous, warm brown eyes. ‘Bambi eyes’, as Elinor’s mother would have described them. Elena had a natural grace about her, so even dressed in jeans and a shirt she looked impeccably smart. Completely oblivious to her own attractiveness, she had no affected mannerisms.

  José, who was sitting next to her, appeared distinctly dishevelled by contrast. His hair was a mess, there were dark shadows under his eyes and he had a five o’clock shadow on his face. He looked like a man who was under a lot of pressure. He was older and more careworn than Elena but it was soon obvious who had the stronger personality in the rela
tionship.

  After studying the photos on Elinor’s phone, Elena and José turned simultaneously and looked at the mural on the back wall of the café.

  ‘How much would you charge us for painting a new mural?’ José asked Elinor suspiciously, apparently thinking Elinor had her own selfish agenda with this meeting.

  ‘I wouldn’t charge you. If you’d like me to paint the wall I’d do it for free.’

  The two of them stared at Elinor with puzzled frowns on their faces. Almost as if she’d suddenly sprouted horns on her head, Elinor thought ruefully.

  ‘Why would you paint a mural for us for free?’ asked Elena bluntly.

  Elinor squirmed uncomfortably on her seat.

  ‘I’m not working properly at the moment and I’ve loads of spare time. Besides I love hanging around these beaches and I’d enjoy helping you guys out. But I warn you, I’ll be asking for free food and paint during the time I work here,’ she added, grinning cheekily at them.

  Elena looked at her pensively for a moment and then turned to speak to her husband.

  ‘I think it’s a good idea, José. If Elinor wants to help us out eso sería estupendo. It would be nice to have a better fresco on that wall,’ said Elena softly, stroking her husband’s arm persuasively.

  José shrugged fatalistically, as though there was nothing more to be said if that’s what his wife wanted.

  ‘What picture would you put on the wall instead? Would you still paint surfers?’ Elena asked Elinor, as though Elinor’s co-operation in the project was already a fait accompli.

  ‘That’s up to you guys. Personally, I’d do something with a more universal appeal. I know most of your clientele surfs but you might be able to broaden your customer base. I would paint a view of Constantine Bay with Trevose Head in the distance, or else a view of the golf course with St Constantine’s holy well and ruined church. Both of these might have a broader appeal.’

  José and Elena mulled this over. It was clear to Elinor that José wasn’t keen on any changes but that Elena, having reached the end of her tether with their business enterprise, was willing to consider more lateral solutions to their slow trade.