The Little B & B at Cove End

by Linda Mitchelmore

  ‘Um, well, no thanks. Not that I’m not grateful you’ve asked but …’

  ‘Coffee back home?’ Cara jumped in quickly. She hoped Tom wasn’t going to tell her something she didn’t want to hear. ‘I’ve got something to show you actually,’ she went on. I meant to show you before but the opportunity didn’t present itself. It’s …’

  ‘Don’t tell me!’ Tom said. ‘I love surprises!’

  Tom reached out a hand and put two fingers to Cara’s lips, holding them there, and Cara made little kissy noises against his skin.

  ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘I’ll just get the bill.’

  ‘It’s all lies!’ Tom said when he’d finished reading the piece about the art festival and how Louise would be showing her work. ‘Why didn’t you show me this before?’

  Cara hadn’t seen Tom angry before. His anger was sharpening his features, making his eyes as dark as coal.

  ‘I left it on the kitchen table thinking, perhaps, you’d pick up the paper and flick through and see it. I didn’t want you to think, oh God, I don’t know what it was I didn’t want you to think … that I was jealous or something. If Louise is still a big part of your life, then I’m thinking I should back off…

  ‘She’s not. I didn’t know she’d gone to the newspapers. Honestly. I’m left wondering, though, why you’ve shown me now? After we had such a lovely evening.’

  ‘There didn’t seem to be a right time,’ Cara said, standing firm but feeling like jelly inside. ‘I assumed – wrongly I know now – that you would have seen it and I was wondering why you hadn’t told me she was sharing your venue.’

  ‘I didn’t tell you because she most definitely isn’t. You do believe that, don’t you?’

  ‘I want to,’ Cara said. ‘I believe you, but if Louise has arranged it with the organisers …’

  ‘She hadn’t up until a few hours ago when I was hanging my pictures and three members of the committee were there helping. Her name never cropped up. I think it would have if they’d agreed she could share my space. There were no tables up for pottery to be placed on either. So … I’d say that’s a definite no.’

  ‘Perhaps she’ll be at another venue?’

  ‘I can’t do anything about that if she is,’ Tom said. ‘She’s a bona fide artist, fairly well known in her field.’

  ‘I see,’ Cara said.

  Cara could also see that the absent but ever-present Louise was spoiling their lovely evening – hers and Tom’s.

  ‘Look, Cara,’ Tom said. He folded the newspaper back up, walked over to the recycling box Cara kept in an alcove by the back door and threw it in. ‘That’s exactly what I think of that little story. And I’m sorry if I got angry, but it wasn’t at you.’

  ‘I know,’ Cara said. ‘I wish I hadn’t shown you now. It’s spoiled everything.’

  Tom reached for Cara’s hands and held them between his own.

  ‘It hasn’t spoiled what we had over dinner tonight. Not for me anyway. I haven’t told you before, but when Louise pitched up and we met for dinner in the village she asked if there was anyone in my life. And I said yes, there was. I wasn’t entirely truthful. You were in my life because I was stopping in your home, but that wasn’t what Louise meant by her question and I knew it. She got mad at me then. The upshot is Louise doesn’t want me – never did really with all the affairs she had, some of which I knew about but chose to ignore because, well, she was still my muse and we were making money, and I’m not very proud of that now. But she also doesn’t want anyone else to have me. Going to the newspaper with a load of lies – and possibly wishful thinking on her part – was an act of revenge. She’s done it before. So …’ Tom sighed deeply. ‘We might not have a smooth ride of it for a while with Louise but we’ve begun this journey, you and me, and it will be wonderful if we can continue together. And now if you’ve got a cork in a drawer somewhere you can stick it in my mouth. I’ve probably said more than enough.’

  ‘A cork?’ Cara said. She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Her hands were still held firmly between Tom’s, and she knew she was shaking slightly, a mixture of apprehension that she’d so badly timed showing him the newspaper cutting but also the fact Tom wanted a future with her. ‘No, I don’t have a cork, but I’m glad you’ve told me what you have. Coffee or a nightcap?’

  ‘Coffee, please,’ Tom said. He yawned. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever spoken as many sentences in a row as I did just now. I need something to revive me.’

  ‘Coffee it is, then,’ Cara said. ‘In the sitting room?’

  ‘Perfect,’ Tom said. He plonked a kiss on Cara’s forehead. ‘Wake me up if I’m asleep by the time you bring it in.’

  But Tom wasn’t asleep when she went in with two coffees on a tray. Tom was staring at the painting of her great-grandmother, Emma. In it Emma was wearing a blouse that had seen better days – it was frayed on the collar – and her auburn curls were dishevelled. Her face, thin and milky white, hinted at some sadness, but her eyes held the artist’s with something like fire in them.

  ‘I don’t believe this,’ Tom said.

  ‘Believe what?’

  ‘What a painting! I’ve never seen a portrait of Seth Jago’s before, and I don’t think the art world has either. Sometimes there are moments in life when an artist thinks, “I wish I’d painted that” and this is one of them.’ Tom held the painting out at arm’s length. ‘I thought I’d fallen asleep and woken up in a dream when I saw it.’

  ‘It’s no dream. It’s for real. Family legend has it that he painted it from memory. It was the moment he fell in love with her. I know she’d been made homeless and Seth’s scoundrel of a father had something to do with that, but no more. Well, no more except that Seth married her eventually.’

  ‘She looks very young in this painting,’ Tom said. ‘About the same age Mae is now, I’d say.’

  ‘I’ve always thought it was so romantic, that story.’

  ‘It’s full of soul,’ Tom said.

  He propped the painting against the sofa cushions, studying it in silence for what seemed, to Cara, like ages.

  ‘You sounded surprised,’ Cara said. ‘When you saw it.’

  ‘Yeah, I said I like surprises, didn’t I?’

  ‘You did. But not the one I gave you with the newspaper cutting?’

  ‘This more that makes up for it as surprises go, Cara. It ranks up there with the best of them,’ Tom said. ‘But now I think – much against my instincts and because I’ve just heard the toilet flush, which means Mae is upstairs and I don’t think it would be right of me to, well, I think you know what my instincts are about moving us on from those two kisses – I’m going to say goodnight.’ He reached for Cara and drew her to him, kissing her long and slow, and utterly sensuously before pulling back to smile into her face, his eyes so bright that Cara could see her reflection in them. ‘And you’re not the only one who can spring a surprise. Just wait until you see my star exhibit – you aren’t going to believe your eyes!’

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  ‘I can’t believe the exhibition has come around so fast,’ Mae said. She was helping Cara make topping for bruschetta because her mother had decided they would have a little party after the private view. ‘And sometimes I can’t believe that Tom’s painted enough paintings to fill the village hall in the short time he’s been here. How many, do you know?’

  ‘He hasn’t said. All I know is he’s changed genre or subject or whatever it is artists call the style they paint in.’

  ‘No nudes, then?’ Mae said. Not that it would bother her if there were any because Bailey had explained about how an artist only sees the body as a body, the contours and the skin colour, every blemish if there are any, hair and nails and all the other things. It’s not, Bailey had said, that he got a hard-on when he did a life class, even though the model was young and perfect, and possibly in some other circumstance he might have fancied her. All he’d been concerned about was capturing her on paper the best he could.
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br />   ‘I don’t think so.’

  Mae tipped olive oil into the chopped sun-dried tomatoes and gave it all a good stir. She reached for the pot of basil, tore off a handful, placing it on the chopping board, going at it in best Jamie Oliver fashion. Scott Matthews in the Boathouse had shown her how to do that.

  ‘When Tom first arrived, me and Josh saw him quite a few times standing on the headland looking out to sea. Once it was quite late, the sun almost gone but not quite. And another time when we walked over to Oyster Cove early one morning, he was sitting on the beach, totally alone. We walked quite close to him but he didn’t seem to notice because he was so wrapped up in his drawing.’

  Mae didn’t really want to bring Josh into the conversation but that’s how it had been. Josh had made fun of Tom, calling him a loner or something, and saying art wasn’t much of a career, was it? Just for a moment, Mae wondered if Josh might be at the exhibition, and if he might have changed his opinion of art as a career, seeing as everyone in the village seemed to know just how big a name in the art world Tom was.

  ‘You didn’t say,’ her mother said.

  ‘Yeah, well,’ Mae said. She was feeling a bit embarrassed now. ‘I didn’t like Tom then, did I?’

  ‘But you like him now?’

  ‘I like him better. He hasn’t tried to … oh, I don’t know how to say this … but he hasn’t tried to be my best friend or something, buying me sweets or whatever, so I like him because he likes you.’

  Mae gave the bruschetta topping a final mix.

  ‘And I imagine if he had, you’d have told him in no uncertain terms you weren’t for buying off!’ her mother laughed.

  ‘Probably!’ Mae laughed. ‘What’s next?’

  ‘Just the baby new potatoes to peel and cut in half,’ her mum told her. ‘They should be cool enough. I thought a cream cheese and paprika filling, scoop out a bit of potato and fill the hole with it.’

  ‘I’ll do it. The filling,’ Mae said. She went to the fridge for the tub of cream cheese and found the paprika in the spice drawer. ‘You know what, Mum,’ she said. ‘I wouldn’t mind catering for a career. Cheffing or something. I’ve enjoyed my time in the pub. Scott – that’s the landlord – let me do some prepping sometimes. Some of the sauces that go with the steaks and fish and that. And he let me have a go at choux pastry when one of the kitchen hands didn’t turn up for his duty. Profiteroles are very popular as a dessert, so he said. I didn’t mess up anyway, even though he said it’s not the easiest pastry to make.’

  ‘You didn’t say.’

  ‘Echo, echo,’ Mae laughed. ‘You said that just now. But a girl doesn’t tell her mother everything, you know.’

  ‘Of course she doesn’t,’ her mum said, putting an arm around Mae’s shoulder and giving it a squeeze. ‘But I’m glad you’re telling me now. And I’m glad that we’re talking and doing things together and not dancing round one another like we were for a while when …’

  ‘When we were both struggling to make sense of what happened with Dad and you kept the secret about his gambling a bit too long and I was trying to hang onto being Dad’s little princess a bit too long when I was growing up and, oh heck, Mum, that wasn’t too easy either, the stuff with Josh and not seeing Bailey for the kind person he is, and hating Tom because, well, he isn’t Dad. And Rosie being so bossy with me sometimes.’

  Mae tipped cream cheese into a bowl and sprinkled paprika on it.

  ‘Only because she loves you.’

  ‘Yeah, I know,’ Mae said. ‘Who’d have thought that taking in a few B&B guests could, well, help me grow up a bit is what I’m trying to say.’ Mae held her mother’s gaze and saw that her eyes were glassy with tears. ‘No, no, don’t say anything. I’m on the brink myself and we’ll ruin these fillings if we drip all over them and, oh God, Mum, I love you.’

  ‘Oh, Mae …’ her mum said with a gulp. ‘I love you too. So much.’ She held out her arms towards Mae.

  Mae put down the mixing bowl and threw herself into her mother’s arms and they stood like that for a few moments, rocking and hugging.

  ‘I don’t know where this new and confident daughter who has such profound thoughts has come from but it’s making me so happy, I think I might burst. Your dad would be so proud.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Mae said. ‘He’d be proud of you too. The way you’ve made a success of this B&B lark even though I resisted a bit.’

  ‘A bit?’ her mum laughed.

  ‘A lot then. Sorry. But not just that, there’s your dressmaking and stuff.’ Mae began to pull from her mother’s embrace. ‘Hey! I’ve had an idea. We could turn our dining room into a restaurant – we never use it. We could go for something high-end, foodie. Keep it small. Pop up restaurant style. Not just for B&B guests but the public too. I could do a course …’

  ‘You could. And you can start by making profiteroles for later. I hadn’t thought of dessert.’

  ‘I don’t think there’s time for that,’ Mae said. ‘Have we got lard?’

  ‘Lard?’

  ‘Yeah, you know, beef fat. Dripping.’

  Cara knew what lard was, but not that you made choux pastry with it.

  ‘Er, no.’

  ‘Another time, then,’ Mae said. ‘How many are coming back anyway? There’s an awful lot of stuff here already.’

  ‘You and me, Rosie, Tom, Bailey if he wants to come. Tom asked if he could bring his agent, Claire, and her husband because she’ll be down from London, and there might be a handful of people there who’ve bought his work before … fans, I suppose … and he said if there were, it might be nice to invite them along. Say, a dozen or so?’

  ‘Could I ask Bailey’s sister and her boyfriend? She’s got the night off and Bailey said because she wants to go to the exhibition.’

  ‘Of course you can. The more the merrier.’

  For a few minutes Mae and her mother carried on putting the finishing touches to fillings, peeling the last of the potatoes together and cutting them in half. Yes, she wouldn’t mind doing this for a living … there was something pleasing about making simple things like a potato look good. Taste good too.

  ‘Like Bailey,’ Mae said, ‘his sister’s good at art but hasn’t done anything with it up to now. This art festival has made a lot of people think, hasn’t it? Changed them?’

  ‘Pointed them in the direction they didn’t know they needed to go maybe?’ her mum said.

  ‘Yeah, and that’s another thing,’ Mae said. She wiped her hands down the sides of her apron and took it off. ‘The frocks, Mum. I love them and always will but, well, I wore them for Dad really. We used to watch all those old black and white movies together. Remember?’

  ‘I remember,’ her mum said.

  ‘You make that sound a bit sad.’ Mae realised now that perhaps she and her dad had excluded her mum from their little bubble of old films watching. ‘They aren’t your thing, are they, old black and white movies?’

  ‘Not really. But it was something you and your dad shared so that was fine with me.’

  ‘Yeah, I know that now. But back to the frocks … I don’t know that I want to wear them all the time any more. I wore them for Dad and kept on wearing them after he died because it made him feel closer. I know he’ll always be close, but maybe it’s time to wear stuff for me. I know you’ve only just made me a new one and I’ll keep it – I’ll keep them all because there’ll be times like school proms and parties and stuff when it’ll be fun to wear them, but …’

  Mae shrugged her shoulders. But what else could she wear to the exhibition? She only had her school uniform and some ancient sports’ gear.

  ‘I don’t suppose I could borrow a pair of your jeans? And a top of some sort? One of your lacy strappy ones?’

  ‘Now there’s a question I never thought I’d hear from my fifteen-year-old daughter! Of course you can. But I can do better than that. I’ve been squirreling away stuff I thought you might like to wear sometime. Only last week I found some Levi’s in the Animals in Di
stress charity shop that I’m pretty sure have never been worn and that will fit you. Come on, let’s go and find them. Tom wants you and me there half an hour before the others turn up, remember?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Mae said. ‘He told me twice.’

  Mae wondered why, but when Tom had told her, he’d had a silly grin on his face as though he had some delicious secret – something she’d be pleased about.

  ‘And me,’ her mum said.

  ‘Probably early-onset dementia or something,’ Mae said with as straight a face as she could manage.

  ‘Mae, that’s …’

  ‘Only joking!’ Mae said. Honestly, her mum was so easy to wind up!

  ‘And I’m a bit on edge wondering what we’re going to see. I’m beginning to feel a bit anxious now. Anyway, we can’t stand here chatting much longer. Rosie will be here soon and I’ve still to get myself tidied up a bit, turn the sow’s ear that’s my cooking gear into the silk purse required of a private view.’

  ‘From where I’m standing, Mum,’ Mae said, grinning broadly, ‘Tom wouldn’t notice if you turned up in a bin bag. He’s besotted.’ She began to run for the door, but stopped to turn round and look back. ‘But why take the risk?’

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  ‘Cara?’ Rosie said. ‘You okay? You look sort of spacey?’

  Rosie had just pitched up – early – for the private view, looking like she’d stepped from the front page of Vogue in a black and white striped off-the-shoulder dress with an asymmetric hem, and heels so high Cara feared she’d snap an ankle on the pebbled pathway up to the village hall.

  ‘Who wouldn’t after the conversation I’ve just had with my daughter?’

  ‘Oh God, what now?’ Rosie said. ‘I saw her rushing off down the road just now as I drove up. I hardly recognised her for a moment, actually. Jeans? Mae? And a top I think I bought you for your last birthday. Something cataclysmic must have happened to get her out of her period frocks. Not that Josh-waste-of-space back on the scene?’