‘Are so out of practice, they’ve turned into moths,’ he finishes for me.
I nod, because I know exactly what he means. If you become socially isolated for any period of time, it’s hard to throw yourself back into it. It’s easier to stay away from people, to avoid awkward situations, to cocoon yourself in the peace and quiet of your own company. I mean, I don’t live in a dark wardrobe and eat holes in clothes, but I get his moth metaphor completely.
The problem with moths, though, is that every now and then they have this crazy urge to fly towards the bright light – even if it’s going to sizzle their wings and send them spiralling down to the ground, where they will be eaten by predatory spiders or sucked into a vacuum cleaner.
I find myself staring at Matt, which doesn’t surprise me at all, bearing in mind my recent hormonal imbalance, and find him staring back at me, which is more of a surprise. I can’t think of a single thing to say and, more importantly perhaps, I don’t feel like I need to. We’re just two little old moths, chilling out and drinking hideous beer together …
Jimbo helpfully breaks the moment by letting out an almighty fart and then looking around, confused, as though he’s wondering where on earth that noise came from. We both laugh – it is impossible not to – and I finally realise that I cannot possibly finish this beer. I decide that if I never drink another Guinness again, I will be happy.
‘Would you like another?’ he asks, gesturing at the can.
I am halfway considering saying yes, which is weird, when the delicate sound of screeching hell bunnies reaches us from outside. Matt frowns, unsure as to what creatures are emitting such strange other-worldly cries, but I am fairly confident I know.
I pull the curtain back and, sure enough, a gang of bored teenagers is running around out there playing tag. There’s a lot of rough and tumble, some kicking and a lot of yelling. It’s a bit like the Hunger Games, but hopefully without the weaponry and the big gongy noises announcing that someone is dead.
‘Better not,’ I say, passing the can back to him and dragging Jimbo back to his reluctant feet. ‘In my experience, the only way to stop this kind of thing is with food.’
Chapter 12
The man sitting at a table for two in the window could easily be a hundred years old. His face is deeply tanned and the creases and crevices marking his skin look like the symbols on an ordnance survey map. Piercing blue eyes are looking up at me and he’s offering me a walnut-shaded hand to shake.
‘Alright, my luvver?’ he says, laughter playing around those eyes. ‘Feeling joppety-joppety, are ‘ee?’
I resist the temptation to slap myself around the ears to clean out the wax and instead I say, ‘I’m sorry? I didn’t quite catch that.’
‘Ignore him!’ shouts Cherie from behind the serving counter, where she’s sorting cutlery and keeping an amused eye on me.
‘He’s just trying to get you all betwattled!’
The two of them explode into laughter and I join in, because it’s better than standing there looking like even more of an idiot.
‘I think he’s succeeding,’ I reply, much to their amusement.
‘Now, what can I get you, Frank?’ I ask, praying to God that I’ve remembered correctly and this is actually Farmer Frank. The man who I’ve already seen photos of in Cherie’s magic file. ‘The usual?’
‘I daresay that’ll do,’ Frank replies, his accent curvier than Jessica Rabbit. ‘I’ll have a nice bowl of low-fat gluten-free granola and a pint of zider, please.’
He looks deadly serious, but I can hear Cherie sniggering away in the background, and know that this old dog is winding me up. There was no mention of gluten-free or ‘zider’ on his notes.
‘Coming right up,’ I say, giving him a quick smile and walking away. I flash Cherie a broad wink as I pass by, just to let her know I’m in on the game, and head for the kitchen.
The kitchen, unlike the rest of the café, is all sharp edges and shiny chrome and mod cons. It’s a thing of beauty and I’m already looking forward to experimenting in here – Cherie’s given me the go-ahead to try out a few ideas, and I’m planning a foray into the exciting world of ice-cream milk-shakes as my first try-out.
My kids love them flavoured with their favourite chocolate bars, and you can get them all over Manchester – made with Flakes or Dime or Bounty or Mars Bar. There’s nothing like them on the menu and I think the tourists, at least, will love them. Especially if we go all right-on and use ‘locally sourced’ milk, which Cherie does anyway.
My current job, however, doesn’t involve any experimentation at all. It involves sticking several lovely fat rashers of bacon on the griddle and letting it sizzle until the crispy bits are almost black. Then I carve two extra-thick slices of the white bread that Cherie’s just pulled out of the oven and slather it with home-made chutney. The bacon goes on next, still juicy, and I can’t help but inhale appreciatively as all the aromas blend together.
Before I started the bacon, I found Frank’s mug on the shelf – it’s the size of a bucket and bears the motto ‘Farmers do it in tractors’ – and poured hot tea over a bag, which I’ve left in now for so long that it looks more like treacle. This, I recall from the notes, is exactly how Frank likes his breakfast – the breakfast he comes in for every single morning.
I slice the sandwich in two, give the tea bag a final stir and I am ready. Ready to serve my first-ever customer at the Comfort Food Café. I feel a moment of sheer excitement and am secretly a little bit triumphant inside. It might just be a bacon buttie, but it means a lot to me.
I bear the plate and the mug back out, and put them down in front of Frank.
‘One bowl of low-fat gluten-free granola and a mug of finest scrumpy for you, Frank,’ I say, giving him a little mock curtsey.
He salutes me with one of his gnarled hands and gestures for me to sit down with him. I wonder if I should check with Cherie, but realise that’s a daft thing to even consider. There are no other customers right now. Everything I need to prepare is under control and when the lunchtime rush comes these few minutes of peace will be a distant memory.
So I sit down and within seconds Cherie arrives, plonking a mug of coffee in front of me, giving Frank an affectionate pat on the shoulder before she takes herself off again.
‘So,’ he says, between bites, ‘it’s Manchester, is it?’
‘It is,’ I reply, sipping my drink and wondering what stories this man has to tell. He looks fit as a fiddle, his forearms still corded with lean muscle, his eyes still clear and sharp, his hair silver-white but still very much attached to his head.
‘This is grand, lass,’ he adds, in a more than passable Northern accent. I laugh and ask him if he’s a secret Mancunian.
‘Oh no, my love, Dorset born and bred is I. But I was stationed up in Cheshire for a while during my National Service. Had some proper good times, we did. This is before I met my wife, mind. I’ve had a soft spot for you Northern girls ever since …’
‘I’ll have to watch myself,’ I say, imagining him young and handsome and charming, and not finding it all that difficult. ‘I can see you’re a bit of a Jack the Lad. Is that tea all right for you? Cherie said strong, but I wasn’t sure exactly how strong she meant.’
‘This’s perfect, don’t be worrying. I’ve had the same breakfast for the last fifty years, you know – it’s the key to a happy marriage.’
‘What?’ I say, suspicious that he’s about to wind me up again. ‘Bacon?’
‘That, and knowing when to keep your mouth shut. When I first wed my Bessy she was a terrible cook. Burned the bacon every day. Made tea so thick the spoon stood up. But I loved her more than I loved my stomach, so I never complained. And because I never complained, I got the same thing, every single day. Even on the day she passed.
‘And after she passed, year and a half ago now, I realised that I’d gotten so used to it, I felt hungry all day if I went without. I tried making it myself, but, well … I’m supposing it take
s a special kind of person to burn bacon in exactly the right way. So I started coming here instead and Cherie looks after me.’
‘She seems to look after a lot of people,’ I reply, biting my lip to stop myself from getting too emotional about his story. Because it’s exactly that – his story – not mine, and I need to stop letting my own feelings piggy-back on to everyone else’s. I’ll be exhausted by the end of the day if I do that. I have been known to cry at an especially cute Andrex puppy, never mind tales of lifelong love.
‘That she does. Keeps her out of trouble, you know. Needs to stay active, that one, or she’ll get into mischief. I know the kind. And I reckon I see another one heading right towards us …’
I look up, and see Lizzie heading in our direction. I’d expected a battle, but both her and Nate were happy to come in with me this morning. They’ve been down by the beach searching for fossils, trying to skim stones and generally larking around. I suspect that the detente has now come to an end and Nate is possibly buried up to his neck in sand as the tide comes in.
‘Have you buried your brother up to his neck in sand so he’ll drown when the tide comes in?’ I ask, taking in her yellow-coated hands and the damp patches on the knees of her skinny jeans.
‘What?’ she asks, in mock horror. ‘Of course not! And if I did, I’d have only packed the sand in loosely, so he could wriggle out like a little worm …’
I’m not a hundred per cent sure what all of that means and suspect the only way to know for sure is to go and peer down at the cove from the terrace at the front of the café, which always makes me feel a bit dizzy and a bit weird.
Lizzie sits down with us and switches on one of her huge, gorgeous smiles, purely for Farmer Frank’s benefit. She holds out her hand for him to shake and properly introduces herself. The two of them chat for a moment and I notice the twinkle in Frank’s blue eyes get even more twinkly as he lays on the thick Dorset ‘I be jus’ a simple country bumpkin, me’ accent that he seems to slip in and out of as suits.
Lizzie is explaining her alleged school project to him and asking if it’s okay to take his picture and use it in her online journal.
‘It’s kind of like a diary,’ she says, obviously trying to translate it into Old Person, ‘but using computers. Phones really, but these days phones are actually just teeny tiny computers that let us do everything those massive ancient ones used to let people do.’
‘Oh, I see,’ says Frank, eyes wide in apparent amazement at the state of technology in the twenty-first century. I’ve only known Frank for half an hour, but it’s half an hour longer than Lizzie. I sit back and sip my coffee, trying not to smirk as I wait for the punch line.
‘So, what do you think, Frank?’ asks Lizzie, buzzing with enthusiasm now. And, to be honest, I can see why – Frank has the sort of brilliant character face that would photograph amazingly. Her energy is high and I start to think that perhaps she’s genuinely getting into this, rather than just using it as a way to let off steam.
‘Weeeeeeell,’ replies Frank, drawling out the word until there are about ten syllables in it, and rubbing his chin in confusion. ‘To be honest, young ‘un, it depends on what photo-sharing system you’re using. Are you going Instagram? Tumblr? Have you got a Pinterest board set up? And have you ever tried Flickr? Or are you going to be Snapchatting my devilishly handsome face to all your friends?’
I knew this – or something similar – was coming, but I still spit coffee out of my mouth at the expression on my daughter’s face. Seriously, she couldn’t have looked more taken aback if the table had started talking to her.
To give her credit, she recovers quickly. One annoyed sideways glance at me and she’s back up and running.
‘Instagram. Not completely public, so I can add you as a follower and you can see what I’m posting, if you like. To be honest, it started as a bit of a laugh and a way to stay in touch with my mates back home, but I’m taking it a bit more seriously now. Do you have grandkids, Frank?’
‘How did you guess, my lovely? I do – and they live in Australia. I like to stay up with the trends an’ all, or they’ll be thinking I’m just some old duffer, won’t they?’
Lizzie has the good grace to look vaguely apologetic before standing up and announcing that she has to leave now.
‘Why?’ I ask, feeling slightly suspicious.
‘Because the tide really is coming in and I need to check that Nate’s managed to get out of his sand prison before he dies …’
She jogs off and out of the door and I resist the urge to chase after her and check on my baby boy. I need to give him a little bit of independence. Plus I can see from the terrace without him even knowing.
‘That should be a good picture, eh?’ says Frank, leaning back in his chair. ‘The little lad with his head poking up, maybe a crab on top?’
I’m suddenly not feeling quite so laid back and scrape my chair on the floor as I jump to my feet and dash towards the terrace. There’s one of those mounted telescopes out there, which thankfully doesn’t need coins, and I twist it around, scanning and scoping until I finally see Nate.
He’s not buried in the sand. He’s throwing sticks for Jimbo, who is ignoring them. There are no crabs slowly and agonisingly eating his nose and he looks perfectly happy. I see Lizzie join him and see her phone come out to take photos. Or at least I think that’s what she’s doing, until there is the ding of a text landing.
I pull mine out of my jeans pocket and open the message.
‘U R A SUCKER!!!’ it says, with a few hilariously amused emojis draped after the exclamation marks.
WEEK 2
In which I am desperate for a nice long nap, almost get killed by an espresso machine, discover I am crap at yoga and lose one of my shoes in a wheat field …
Chapter 13
By the end of my first week at the Comfort Food Café, I am several things. The main one, I decide, as I wearily finish stacking the dishwasher at Hyacinth, is exhausted.
I would never in a million years diss the role of a stay-at-home mum. I’ve done it and it’s not easy. It’s not as though most of us are living like the Real Housewives of Wherever, going to expensive lunches and organising charity events and scheduling our botox sessions around our kids’ piano recitals.
Most of us are very, very busy, keeping the house running, making sure the kids are all right, ensuring that hubbie has everything he needs and anticipating everyone else’s requirements before they’ve even thought of them.
It is, alone, a full-time job, and I’d always looked on in wonder at those women who had demanding careers as well. The ones I’d see occasionally at school events, who not only seemed to have perfectly well-adjusted children, but could also wear business suits and heels and clearly have Very Important Jobs.
Now, after my first week as a working mother, my feelings have moved away from wonder and more towards ‘how-the-fuck-do-they-do-it-and-stay-sane?’ Excuse my French, but I am genuinely amazed and awed.
It’s not as if working flexible hours in a café is even a Very Important Job. I’m never going to be named in the New Year’s Honours for my services to blueberry muffins, am I? Plus my kids are almost at the stage where they look after themselves; it’s not as though I have a labour-intensive toddler or an inquisitive five-year-old. I have kids who, in other cultures, would be living in their own homes by now. In comparison to many working women, I have it easy.
So I feel like an absolute wusser for saying it, but I am knackered. I have worked every day – sometimes a full shift from eight until three, other times far less than that – and I am wiped out in every conceivable way.
My feet feel like they’ve been buried in concrete, my lower back needs a TENS machine and my eyes are closing almost against my will. I’ve kept going on adrenaline and sheer bloody-mindedness, but now I’ve finally stopped and made the mistake of sitting down, the fatigue is crippling me and I fear I may never leave the sofa. I may not even have the energy to drag myself up to be
d.
It is 8.45pm on a Sunday. Tomorrow is my day off. I am planning to celebrate with a wild sleeping party, where I get my snooze on, ride the crazy snore train and generally have it large. The kids seem to feel the same as they have both gone to bed already. Nate, I suspect, will actually be asleep. Lizzie will be doing something that involves her phone. They’re both wiped out as well.
I don’t think they’ve had this much fresh air for a very long time. Cherie found them both bikes to borrow and they’ve been tootling around, enjoying the kind of freedom that they never get at home. Lizzie’s hair is much less EMO-groomed, which is wonderful to see, and both of them have permanently rosy cheeks.
Not that we’re suddenly living in some Swallows and Amazons idyll. The kids around here do the same stuff as kids anywhere. They hang around in small gangs, trying to give the impression that they’re cool. The big difference here is that there is a lot less to do – the nearest cinema is in Lyme Regis; a bowling alley is likely to include grass and older people in white, the fleshpots of Weymouth and Poole are miles away and getting around is a lot less easy without Manchester’s convenient tram stops.
In the city there’s so much – water parks and giant shopping centres and laser quest and multiplexes and interactive museums and massive indoor ski slopes and dry bars and enormous hangars full of trampolines.
Here, there’s none of that – and yet they seem less bored. Everything’s less structured and less organised, and every day I’ve seen them doing things I know they (I mean Lizzie) would have sneered at not so long ago. Like scrambling around the rock pools. Cycling all the way up hills just so they can freewheel back down. Jumping over waves. Climbing the edges of the cliffs. Eating ice-cream in the sun. Trying to hand-feed seagulls, then leaping back in terror when one swoops down. Fossil-hunting. Just … being.
Summer at the Comfort Food Cafe Page 10