‘Tea, or something stronger?’ Liz asked and Tabitha bit her lower lip.
‘I’d better not have a drink now. I’m dead nervous. What if I balls it up? It’s so long since I performed, I think I’ve lost my nerve.’
‘Nonsense, you’ll be great. And remember, you’ll be surrounded by friends.’
‘I know,’ said Tabitha, frowning. ‘But I’ve never been on stage on my own. I’ve always had a band.’
Liz turned to the counter behind and passed her friend a tiny parcel wrapped in pink tissue paper.
‘What is it?’
‘Open it.’
Tabitha tore off the sticky tape and inside was another sheet of white tissue paper, and inside that, a tiny gold charm depicting a seated figure with peaky ears and funny pointed shoes, his arms wrapped around his knees. It was similar in size to the ones on the bracelet that she was wearing now.
‘It’s a Cornish piskey,’ Liz explained. ‘When you’re feeling nervous, you can stroke it and it’s supposed to bring you good luck.’
Tabitha immediately took off the bracelet and attached the charm.
‘Thank you,’ she said, kissing her friend on the cheek. ‘I feel braver already!’
When they went upstairs to say goodbye, Oscar was chasing Lowenna around the blow-up bed in Rosie’s room, where he was to sleep, while Rosie sat with Robert on the end of her own bed, watching with a mixture of amusement and trepidation, in case one of them should fall.
To Liz’s surprise, Rosie was in her daft pink and black leopard-print onesie, which must have been rather warm today.
‘What time is Tim coming?’ Liz asked, as the last thing she’d heard was that his mum was to drop him off for a couple of hours. Tim and Rosie usually went to one or the other’s house at the weekend, or they’d meet up with friends, and Rosie always did her hair and put on make-up. She was becoming prettier by the day, people often commented.
She shrugged. ‘He can’t make it.’
‘Oh, why?’
Rosie continued to watch the younger ones, avoiding Liz’s gaze. ‘I think he’s got to tidy his room.’
It was a lie, and she knew that Liz knew.
‘That’s a shame. Why don’t you go to his place instead? Robert could give you a lift – he can take the little ones; they’ll enjoy it.’
‘I’d rather stay in.’
Liz was as sure as she could be that Amelia was involved, and little flames of worry licked around her insides. She felt her daughter’s wounds more keenly than if they were her own. Sometimes it seemed like a curse.
‘Let’s go shopping tomorrow. We can get you some new jeans – or a dress, if you prefer?’
Rosie smiled sadly. ‘Thanks, Mum, but I’ve already got plans.’
There was nothing for it but to take their leave, and Liz and Tabitha set off down Humble Hill, stopping for a moment to admire the sumptuous display of pinks, anemones, lupins, delphiniums and purple foxgloves in Jean’s garden. Liz was thinking all the while that she wished she could wave a magic wand and make Amelia disappear, but life wasn’t like that, and in any case, it wasn’t the girl’s fault that she was pretty and fun and Tim was drawn to her like a moth to a flame.
They turned right into Fore Street and it wasn’t long before they passed Tabitha’s former home, which was standing cold, dark and empty, awaiting the arrival of its new owners. Tabitha looked the other way, not wishing to stir up unhappy memories.
A few doors down, they reached The Hole in the Wall pub, so named because it once had a spy hole that enabled smugglers to keep watch for customs men. The place had been doing a roaring trade since being taken over by its new landlord, Danny, and initially this had ruffled the feathers of Barbara, who ran the nearby Lobster Pot and had noticed a worrying dip in business. Fortunately, however, things had settled down once she’d realised that the two establishments appealed to completely different clienteles and her old customers had started to return. Now, she and Danny got on famously, even drinking in each other’s hostelries occasionally and toasting each other’s health, much to Liz’s relief, as she hated conflict of any sort; she just wanted everyone to get on.
The doorway of Danny’s pub was so low that anyone over about five feet five inches tall had to stoop to get in, which wasn’t a problem for Liz, but Tabitha was careful to lower her head as they stepped over the threshold. It was dark inside and it took a moment or two for the women to notice the landlord, who was behind the wooden bar, wiping it down with a big blue cloth. He had grown up in Devon and appeared to have three main passions: business, rock and pop music and water sports, particularly surfing. In fact, it was the lure of the Cornish waves that had drawn him to the county in the first place.
Tall and slim, Danny had longish fair hair tied back in a ponytail, a neatly trimmed beard and a year-round tan, owing, no doubt, to the amount of time he spent in the fresh air. He’d often pop out during the day to get in a spot of surfing or windsailing, leaving the pub in the hands of his staff, who adored his laid-back, hipster-ish style, although they were well aware that there was a line they couldn’t cross. Behind the easy-going exterior lay a strong sense of fair play coupled with a shrewd business brain that they’d ignore at their peril. He looked after his staff and believed in having a laugh, but there’d be trouble if someone failed to pull their weight and let the others do all the work.
He looked up when the women entered, and on catching sight of Tabitha his eyes widened and he swallowed repeatedly, making his Adam’s apple bob. Liz was amused. She could sense sparks of static crackling off Tabitha, too, and was half-inclined to push them together. The whole village could tell that they fancied each other like crazy, but neither had made a move. Tabitha was, understandably, wary of men, having had such a bad experience, while Danny just seemed overawed, yet Liz was pretty sure that her friend wouldn’t say no if he’d only take the plunge and ask her out.
There were various huddles of customers and you could hear the sounds of instruments being tuned and microphones being tested next door, as there were to be a number of different acts.
‘Can I buy you a drink, Tabs?’ Liz asked as they walked past a heavily pierced woman in a pink vest top and approached the bar. ‘White wine?’ She rested her elbows on the counter and leaned towards Danny. ‘She’s a bit nervous. I keep telling her she’ll be great.’
Danny scratched his shoulder, trying to appear nonchalant, and nodded several times too often. ‘’Course she will. She’ll be extraordinary. In a good way, I mean,’ he added quickly. ‘I mean, she’s stunning.’ His face fell. ‘That is, her voice is stunning, not her looks.’ His eyes widened in alarm. ‘Of course, she does look great...’
Liz came to his rescue.
‘What time will she be on?’ she asked breezily, while Tabitha fiddled with her charm bracelet, twisting it round and round and being no help at all. ‘I want to be able to see her properly.’
Danny took a deep breath and glanced at Tabitha, whose eyes fell to the floor. ‘After the interval. I thought she’d prefer it.’
Just then one of his bar staff arrived with a cheery ‘Hi, boss!’ and Danny called ‘Hi’ back. He could communicate perfectly well with everyone else.
Tabitha went to get ready while Liz nursed a glass of white wine, and it wasn’t long before she was joined by Tony, Felipe and a lanky youth of about fifteen with a startling Mohawk hairdo, shaved all over apart from a bright-green strip running down the centre of his scalp, and a silver stud in his nose. He appeared to favour the Loveday school of fashion because he was dressed all in black: black jeans, black leather jacket, black T-shirt, black trainers and black shades, which seemed a little unnecessary indoors.
The most unusual thing about him, though, was the large round holes in both earlobes lined with thick silver rings, like flesh plugs, off which hung substantial wooden crosses. Liz, who’d never seen anything quite like them before, was mesmerised.
‘Darling!’ Tony cried, embracing her. ‘How are
you? Meet Rafael, Felipe’s brother! He’s come to live with us for a while. Isn’t that grand?’ He leaned in close and whispered in her ear, ‘He looks a bit intimidating but he’s a softie really. Wouldn’t hurt a fly.’
Rafael craned his neck awkwardly as if it were stiff, before grunting hello to Liz and running a hand through his Mohawk. He had an array of thick silver rings, like knuckledusters, on his fingers and thumbs, and the air of someone trying his best to look hard but not quite pulling it off. The baby-soft skin on his cheeks was a giveaway, as was the downy fluff on his upper lip.
‘How long have you been in England?’ she asked, hoping to put him at ease, and he replied in a thick accent that he’d arrived on Tuesday.
‘My mother wants me to have British education, but I prefer the school of life.’
She couldn’t tell if he were joking or not. Difficult to say.
‘Would you like a drink?’ she asked, wanting to be welcoming. ‘I think my daughter’s about your age. Her name’s Rosie.’
Seizing the moment, Rafael told the bar girl that he’d like a Peroni beer, only for Tony to intercept.
‘Absolutely no alcohol! We’ve told you about that before.’
Wrapping his arms across his chest, Rafael said something in Portuguese that Liz couldn’t understand but that didn’t sound too polite. Hoping that he wouldn’t swear at her, too, she decided that it would be wise to leave Tony to organise the drinks and took a step back.
‘It must be very different here,’ she said, scrabbling around for a safe topic of conversation. ‘I’ve never been to Brazil. I’d love to go.’
‘Here is boring,’ Rafael replied gloomily. ‘It is all children, old people and dogs.’
Liz tried not to be offended. ‘It’s not as dull as you think. There’s plenty of trouble on a Saturday night. Sometimes the police get called.’
This seemed to perk him up, until Tony snapped at him to take off his sunglasses. The boy pulled a face before grudgingly putting them on his head, and Liz shot him a sympathetic smile. Tony could be a bit like a bull in a china shop sometimes, not having mastered the art of subtle persuasion, and he had virtually no experience of dealing with teenagers either.
Now that the glasses were off, she could see that Rafael was a handsome young man, similar in looks to his older brother, with big, puppyish brown eyes and olive skin. He’d be a hit with the Cornish girls, that was for sure.
Felipe explained that he and Rafael would be based in Tremarnock full-time from now on, while Tony, who worked in London, would join them as often as he could.
‘We think it is a better environment for Rafael here,’ said Felipe, ‘and he has a place at Marymount Academy, starting in September.’
‘You’ll probably be in the year above Rosie then,’ Liz commented. ‘She loves it there. They have an excellent drama department, if that’s your thing, and they do lots of sport.’
Rafael seemed unimpressed, so she tried a different tack.
‘There’s a legendary school disco at the end of the Christmas term.’ She eyed him slyly. ‘Everyone goes a bit mad, even the teachers.’
Instantly, the clouds lifted. ‘That is good. I hope it is good music. I am experienced DJ. I can do really excellent rave.’
The room was filling up, the temperature rising and the noise increasing as more and more bodies squashed into what was quite a small area. It was certainly proving to be a popular event. Liz couldn’t think of anything worse than performing in front of a huge crowd, but Tabitha, who used to sing in pubs and clubs all over Hull, Manchester and Leeds before she met Luke, was almost a pro, or had been.
Liz had never watched her live, but knew that she had a lovely voice because she’d heard her singing to herself around the village when she thought no one was listening. The sound always gladdened Liz’s heart because it seemed to her to be a sign that her friend’s scars were slowly healing.
‘I can’t abide pop!’ A shrill voice nearby jogged her out of her reverie.
Turning, Liz saw Esme’s long, pointy nose, followed by Rick’s bushy beard. They were standing very close to one another, forced together by the crush of bodies, and behind them, towering over most of the other folk, was Audrey, in a low-cut citrus-orange top from her own clothes boutique.
‘They might be all right,’ Rick replied hopefully.
Esme gave him a withering look and twisted slightly so that her bony shoulders were wedged between them like a barrier. ‘I very much doubt it.’ She was wearing some unusual dangly earrings with turquoise ceramic beads and feathers. ‘I only came to support Tabitha, but I shall probably have to block my ears.’
‘You’ve got selective hearing anyway,’ Audrey commented, smirking at Liz, who knew what she meant: Esme had a habit of blanking you if she couldn’t be bothered to answer.
True to form, Esme pretended not to have caught the comment while Audrey motioned bossily to Rick to order her G and T.
‘What’ll you have?’ he asked Esme hopefully.
‘I’ll buy my own,’ she snapped, and Liz flinched on his behalf.
While he dutifully bought Audrey’s drink, Liz went next door to hear the first act, a local group called Heat Haze whose self-recorded demos had led to their being taken on by a well-known record producer. They were inspired by the bands of the sixties, and when Esme came to join Liz, even she had to concede that they were rather good and was soon tapping her feet and jigging along to the music with the best of them.
Next up was Death Rattle, a group of brothers from Bude with long hair, bare chests and black leather trousers who wielded their electric guitars like weapons. After a while, Liz’s head started to thump and, wanting a breath of fresh air, she wove her way back through the crowd towards the exit, spotting Jenny and John Lambert, as well as Ryan, the fishmonger, Nathan, the postman, fitness trainer Annie and Jean and her husband, Tom. Practically the whole of Tremarnock, it seemed, had turned out to cheer Tabitha on – apart, of course, from the team at A Winkle in Time, who were holding the fort in Robert’s absence. You couldn’t close the restaurant on its busiest night, however much you might wish to.
Outside felt deliciously cool and Liz walked a few metres along the dark cobbled street until she reached the seafront, where she perched on the wall, her legs pulled up beneath her, and gazed at the millions of different-coloured stars in the inky sky: white, yellow, orange, red and ice-blue. She could hear laughter coming from The Lobster Pot, where some folk were spilling out on to the road, as well as the distant, raucous voices of the band over the metallic twang of their electric guitars.
Zoning out for a few moments, she focused on the stillness of the warm, dense air around her, listening to the rattle, slap and swish of the incoming tide as it whooshed over pebbles and lapped up the wall, and inhaling the salty scent of rock, water, shell and seaweed. Just for a few moments, she seemed to sense a formidable power linking her to the tide, the moon and the stars, which swell and shrink, pulsing like a beating heart before burning themselves out.
Until she’d come to Tremarnock, she reflected, her life had been chaotic, a meaningless hurtle from one hour to the next, from one day to the other, hoping merely for the energy to keep going, to keep running, and for the strength to carry Rosie on her tired back. Now, however, the hours and days were so rich and full that it was a question, rather, of trying to stand still, to pause and savour each moment as if it were her last. It was a miracle how much had changed.
She might have remained like that for some time had she not been startled by a shout – ‘Hey!’ – followed by a gurgle of wild laughter and the sound of footsteps racing in her direction. Soon she was greeted by the sight of four teens, two boys and two girls, rushing towards her, and Barbara, landlady of the Lobster Pot, clopping after them in high heels, waving her fists.
Without thinking, Liz hopped off the wall and stood in the middle of the street. It would have been easy enough to push past, but on seeing her the teens stopped short, giving Barbar
a time to catch up. Liz now recognised the girl nearest to her as Shannon, whose home she had visited only yesterday with Mike.
‘Oh!’ Shannon said with a flash of recognition. ‘I didn’t know it was you.’
The girl behind snorted and pushed her so hard that she stumbled and almost fell.
‘Fuck off!’ Shannon said furiously before turning back to Liz. ‘She’s just being stupid.’
Liz smiled thinly. Shannon was swaying slightly and smelled of alcohol, while behind her the two boys, with cigarettes in their hands, hung back and pulled up their hoods so that she couldn’t see their faces properly.
‘I will NOT have you behaving like that with my customers,’ Barbara roared. She might have been short in height but there was nothing little about her voice. ‘I’ll have you arrested.’
Liz glanced at Shannon, who had a capital G for Guilt written all over her face, and then again at Barbara.
‘What’s happened?’
‘They were nicking people’s drinks,’ Barbara hollered, her tanned bosom threatening to spill out of her tight white dress. ‘They were glugging them back when they thought no one was looking, the little—’
She lunged forward and grabbed one of the boys by his hood, yanking it down.
‘Don’t think you can hide behind that, young man! I’ve half a mind to call your parents...’
Her voice trailed off and Liz cleared her throat.
‘I know this girl,’ she said, fixing on Shannon. ‘She lives near the manor with her father and brothers. I can take care of this. I’ll make sure she writes an apology.’
The landlady huffed. ‘An apology won’t bring back my customers who left in disgust when they saw what this lot was up to.’ But her shoulders had relaxed somewhat and her cheeks weren’t quite so flushed.
‘That goes for you, too,’ Liz said, staring at the boys, who had stubbed out their cigarettes and shoved their hands in the pockets of their tracksuit bottoms, then at the other girl, whose blonde head hung sheepishly.
Tremarnock Summer Page 8