Summer at the Comfort Food Cafe

by Debbie Johnson

  For now, though, I decide there is nothing on the Clipboard of Justice that can’t wait a few more minutes.

  I wander through to the café and sit with Nate and Lizzie. Nate looks up at me from his head-on-arms position and gives me a half-hearted smile. Lizzie barely looks up from her phone.

  ‘Do you guys want some cake? I have some chocolate orange sponge left,’ I say, returning to my default comfort food setting.

  ‘No thanks, Mum,’ says Nate, turning his eyes back to the view of the bay.

  ‘Cake doesn’t solve everything,’ says Lizzie, finally putting her phone down and leaning back in her chair. She looks at me through narrowed eyes and I am reminded of a snake about to pounce on a mouse.

  ‘True enough, but it often helps,’ I reply, keeping my tone mild. The last thing I want is a fight with her; I know she is only behaving like this because she is unhappy. ‘Are you upset about something? If you are, then tell me, and I’ll see if there’s anything I can do to help.’

  ‘You don’t mean that,’ she snaps, crossing her arms in front of her chest in a classic sulky-teen pose. ‘That’s just something patronising that parents say to make their kids feel respected.’

  ‘No, that’s not true,’ I answer, biting down on a giggle – she is, of course right. Most of the time, that is what we do.

  ‘I will try and help, Lizzie – but I can’t if you don’t tell me what’s bothering you.’

  ‘I don’t want to go back to Manchester,’ she says simply, meeting my eyes face-on, her expression one of pure challenge.

  ‘But that’s where we live, sweetheart – I know this has been lovely, but it’s not our home.’

  ‘Why couldn’t it be, though?’ she insists. ‘They have schools here, too. I’m not stupid, I know it wouldn’t always be like it’s been this summer. I know there’ll be homework and curfews and mean girls and stuff here as well. But we’ve been happy, haven’t we? All of us. Much happier than we were in Manchester.’

  ‘Yeah,’ murmurs Nate, apparently too tired and fed up to even lift his head from the table. ‘What she said.’

  I intend to simply exhale, but the breath ends up puffing out of me like a bugle as I try and come up with a decent answer.

  An answer that reflects the temporary nature of our time in Budbury and how we can’t know what life here is really like.

  An answer that reinforces the fact that Manchester is our home and always has been our home, and was also their Dad’s home.

  An answer that reminds them how much they would miss their grandparents and their Aunt Becca.

  An answer that is honest and heartfelt and true, but completely bypasses my own personal need to get away from this place, from Matt and from the danger that I feel surrounded by.

  Sadly, that answer is as elusive as a unicorn riding on the Loch Ness Monster’s back. I manage one step up from the parental catch-all of ‘just because’, but not by much.

  ‘I know it’s been fab,’ I say. ‘But it was only a holiday, kids. For all kinds of reasons, we have to go home tomorrow.’

  Chapter 34

  I am a shaking, trembling, almost-hyperventilating bag of nerves by the time people start to arrive. As is tradition, apparently, Frank gets here later, once everyone is assembled, so he can make a grand entrance.

  This sounds very unlike the Frank I know, who is more likely to make a wry comment than a grand entrance, and I suspect it is a tradition started by Cherie to make him feel special. As this is only the second time he’s done this without his wife, I also suspect that the ‘tradition’ is also a very recent one.

  I have asked Surfer Sam to go and fetch Cherie and Frank from the farm in his Jeep, to save Frank having to bother driving. In reality, it’s because I also need to get rid of him for a little while as well.

  Now, as we wait for them all to get here, I am able to at least pause and look around at the place and try and soak up some of the atmosphere of my last night at the Comfort Food Café.

  The sun has slid down over the bay and splashed into the sea and the night sky is a deep, velvety blue, clear and star-studded. The fairy lights are on and sparkling, draped over the café and the stage and the fences that wind their way up from the bottom of the hill on the pathways. Each of the table lanterns are glimmering and flickering as well and it feels a little bit like we are in some magical fairy kingdom.

  There are probably around a hundred people here, sitting at the tables, milling around, waiting by the hog roast, helping themselves to plates of food from the packed trestles.

  Most of them are wearing at least some element of fancy dress – cowboy hats, Stetsons, Mexican sombreros I suspect they’ve salvaged from last year, Indian head dresses. Some have thrown themselves into it a bit more enthusiastically, with cowboy boots, chaps, lassoos and guns (hopefully fake) in holsters.

  Willow is fabulously outfitted as a slutty saloon girl, with torn fishnets, a red-velvet bodiced dress and Victorian-style ankle boots. Edie has kept it more conservative and is wearing an old-fashioned bonnet, as though she’s about to set off on a wagon-train journey. It looks especially amusing with her usual sensible cardigan and clunky walking shoes, and is way too big for her head.

  Lizzie and Nate have grabbed some accessories from the fancy-dress rail, and are busy with their friends, shooting each other with water pistols and trying to knock each other’s hats off.

  I have had neither the time nor the inclination to make a lot of effort with my outfit. In fact, I was quite happy to simply wear boot-cut jeans and a pink gingham shirt and hope for the best. Willow, however, had other plans, and has ‘styled’ me into what she calls a ‘spunky frontier gal’.

  The pink gingham shirt has been unbuttoned enough to flash a bit of cleavage and untucked from my waist, the tails tied in a knot at the front. My hair has been parted down the middle and braided into giant plaits that hang down the side of my head. One of the plaits, of course, is bright pink.

  She has drawn freckles on my cheeks with eyebrow pencil and also added glossy red lipstick. It has all been topped with a cowboy hat perched on my head at what I could optimistically call a ‘jaunty’ angle, as even with plaits my hair is stupidly big.

  I secretly fear that I look like a chubby, middle-aged Daisy Duke after a night on the Jager Bombs, and refuse to look in a mirror.

  The DJ has put on some twangy country-and-western tunes as background music, and the bar is doing a roaring trade, especially as it’s free. The crowd is definitely eating and drinking, and well on its way to being merry as well.

  Brenda, Cherie’s sister, arrived about half an hour ago, escorted by her son Robbie, who I’d spoken to on the phone. Robbie is hugely tall, built like a bear and hovers over his mum like a protective parent.

  I saw why when I looked at her and realised that she is not only physically on the frail side but terribly nervous. She is shorter than Cherie by a good few inches and far less robust in build, but she has the same round, crinkled face. Possibly a few more worry lines than her younger sister’s laughter lines, but perhaps that’s to be expected.

  ‘Thank you so much for coming,’ I said, holding her hand, scared to squeeze too tight. ‘I know it’s a long way and this must all feel very strange.’

  ‘Och, it’s like coming home. We grew up just over the county line in Devon, you know, but I’ve never been back until now … just too many memories, most of them sad. I never pictured her ending up back in this part of the world, though. I’m surprised at that. I thought she’d still be jollying her way round the globe or living in an artists’ commune or some such thing … But I’m glad you invited me, anyway, dear, and I hope the poor love doesn’t drop dead of a heart attack the minute she sees me.’

  Her accent is a bewildering mix of West Country and Scottish and she gave me a little smile with that last comment to show that she was joking. Which is good, all things considered.

  ‘I doubt it,’ I replied. ‘She has the constitution of a whole herd of oxen.
Look, I know you don’t know anybody here, and you’ve been on the road a long time. Would you like to come and sit inside the café for a while? Relax and have a drink, catch your breath?’

  ‘Aye, I think that might be a good idea,’ she says, and Robbie nods in agreement. ‘I’m thinking that maybe it would be better if she came in and met me in private, too. It’s been a lifetime apart and neither of us knows how we’re going to react. Better to not do it in public, I reckon.’

  She is, of course, right, and if I’m honest it’s also taken one extra element of pressure away from me. I already have several people here I need to play hostess to, and some of them have come a very long way for this party.

  I glance at my watch and see that it is past nine. Sam will be here any minute, with Cherie and Frank. I look around and get a visual pinpoint on everybody’s location. I am trying to choreograph this, but it already feels out of control. I shrug and decide I’ve done as much as I can – now all I can do is say a little prayer.

  Edie catches my eye, nodding her wobbly bonnet at me, and gives me a double thumbs-up. I grin back at her and wonder where Matt is. He disappeared off somewhere this morning and I haven’t seen him since then.

  Part of me is desperate to see him one last time and the other part – the weak, pathetic part – is hoping he has a sudden engagement elsewhere and I can slink off in the night and head back to Hyacinth.

  We will be setting off early in the morning – as per family rules – so I am not drinking at all. Once this party is well and truly going with a swing, and once I’ve seen how all my plans turn out, I will be corralling the kids into the Picasso and heading back to the cottage. I am so physically drained I am hoping that I immediately fall into a deep sleep and don’t lie awake all night torturing myself about things I can’t control.

  I am prevented from worrying any further by Scrumpy Joe’s sudden yell of, ‘They’re here! Action stations!’

  He has been on lookout duty, standing on one of the wooden tables, looking down towards the car park. He jumps back to the ground and runs over to tell the band.

  The Honky Tonk Fossils have been warned about this and are all prepared to start a rousing live rendition of ‘Happy Birthday’. I hear the twanging of their guitars as they get ready and have to laugh again at how brilliant they look.

  I suspect they have an average age of about seventy-five and every single one of them has a bushy beard and long hair in a Willy Nelson style. Several of them have impressive beer bellies and they are all suited up in black shirts with mother-of-pearl buttons. Pure awesome.

  I nip over to my table full of VIPs, who are all chattering away to each other in such a variety of accents that it sounds a bit like the United Nations over there, and warn them that our birthday boy is about to arrive.

  I gaze back at the café, dimly lit inside, and see that Brenda and Robbie are at their window seat, so they’ll be able to see what’s going on as well.

  I take a very deep breath and wait. And wait. And wait some more.

  The wait turns out to be a little longer than anticipated because Cherie has refused to be wheelchaired all the way up to the café. This was probably completely predictable and totally in character.

  When she finally appears at the top of the path, she is using her crutches, Frank by her side and Sam lurking behind with the now-discarded chair.

  Cherie has completely outdone herself on the costume front and is a magnificently dressed Lily Langtry in deep, plum-coloured taffeta. She has more cleavage on show than I do and a feathered head dress over perfectly coiffed, pinned-up, pink-tipped hair. The skirt of her dress is shimmering and swishing around her ankles as she painstakingly makes her way into the café garden.

  By her side, one hand cautiously on the small of her back, is Frank, who looks just as amazing. He is in full Wyatt Earp garb, complete with a full-length black coat, hat and sheriff’s badge. He – or possibly the woman next to him – has drawn on a twirling moustache with what looks like it might be eye liner and he even has an old-fashioned pocket watch on a gold chain dangling across his waistcoat.

  The entire crowd bursts out into cheers and applause, and Frank gives a little mock bow and tips his hat, every inch the courteous Wild West lawman. Cherie manages a small curtsey and the band launch right in to their hilariously ‘country’ version of ‘Happy Birthday’.

  As the song goes on, people come up to the two of them, hugging them and shaking their hands and patting their backs and wishing Frank all the best.

  It is quite a sight, this tall, lean eighty-year-old, in full fancy dress, standing amid the fairy lights and the candles and his friends, celebrating his birthday surrounded by love, laughter and very dodgy singing. It is a tribute to the man and I can only hope to have half as good a life as he’s had.

  Once ‘Happy Birthday’ is done, the band starts up on something equally twangy that may or may not be from the Kenny Rogers oeuvre, I’m not really sure. Country isn’t my speciality. The small crowd that had gathered around Frank starts to disperse, heading back to their tables, or to get top-ups on the drinks or more food.

  I walk towards him and give him a big hug of my own.

  ‘Happy Birthday, you old devil,’ I say, kissing him on the cheek.

  ‘Careful now, lass,’ he replies, in his mock-Northern accent, ‘you’ll make an old man blush, looking like that.’

  ‘Ha!’ I respond, poking him in the stomach and giving Cherie a little wink. ‘It’d take more than me to make you blush, Frank. But … I do have a special birthday present for you.’

  ‘Oh yes?’ he says, blue eyes crinkling at the corners. ‘What’s that, then? What do you get for the man who has everything?’

  ‘I get him this,’ I say simply, beckoning for my guests to come forward.

  Peter, Frank’s son and Luke, his grandson, emerge from the darkness and walk towards us. I watch Frank’s expressions as they approach and see the emotions flicker across his rugged old face: shock, surprise, doubt, disbelief, and finally – wonderfully – absolute joy.

  He is taller than both of them and throws his arms around their shoulders, tugging them towards him and roaring with delight.

  For a good couple of minutes, all three men disappear in a scrummage of hugging and backslapping. They whirl around a bit, a six-legged beast, and Frank’s hat comes flying off in the huddle. I scoop it up and keep it safe for him.

  Once they finally all calm down and Frank catches his breath enough to talk, they stand in a tight circle, all three of them looking exhilarated and slightly out of puff.

  Frank reaches out and holds his son by both shoulders, giving him a little shake as he stares at his face, as though he can’t quite believe what he’s seeing.

  ‘What are you bloody doing here, Peter?’ he says. ‘And why didn’t you tell me you were coming?’

  ‘Well, it wouldn’t be much of a surprise if we told you, would it, Dad?’ Peter replies, his voice yet another mash-up – West Country and Aussie this time. He’s blonde, solidly built and looks very similar to the smiling teenager standing next to him.

  ‘Besides, Luke here has been nagging me for ages to bring him to the farm again. He wants to be a vet and I reckon there’s no better place to learn than here.’

  I have kind of rehearsed this part with Peter during our phone conversations, late at night for me and early in the morning for him. His dad, he already knows, is a proud man – one who has deliberately avoided reaching out for help, even when he needed it, and has carefully hidden his pain and loneliness from his family.

  He’s fooled them all for a long time and the last thing Frank needs or wants is to think that anybody feels sorry for him.

  Peter had been genuinely convinced that his father was too busy for them to visit and I didn’t disabuse him of that idea – I simply explained that we were having a big party for this eightieth and that this would be a lovely surprise.

  It was only after talking it through with Peter that the rest of
the plan fell into place. Luke genuinely does want to train as a vet and had always planned to take a year off before his studies start. I’ve spoken to Matt and he’s agreed to let him do some extended work experience at his surgery, assuming that Frank will be willing to let his grandson stay for a few months.

  Looking at the besotted expression on his face, I’m guessing that won’t be a problem – the end result being that Frank gets his family back for a while and also gets to feel like he’s helping them out too. Okay, it wouldn’t leave Machiavelli quaking in his boots, but hopefully it’s just enough to stop Frank getting annoyed with me for interfering.

  ‘A vet, is it?’ he says, looking his grandson up and down with a grin on his face that can only be described as daft. ‘You’ll be needing a lot of education for that, lad, and you won’t find all of it at university, either … the farm’s the place for you, sure enough. How long can you both stay? Is Erin here with you?’

  ‘She’s stayed at home with her mum for the time being,’ replies Peter. ‘But if it’s all right with you for Luke to stay on for a while – I believe the local vet’s said he can work with him if he likes – then I’m sure we can arrange for her to visit too. As long as they won’t get in the way, Dad – I know you’re busy on the farm and I wouldn’t want them to be any trouble.’

  ‘I’m not too bloody busy for that! Of course they can stay, long as they like – I’d welcome a bit of trouble! I haven’t had enough of that recently!’ says Frank, moving in to hug them both again. It’s like he still can’t believe they’re there and has to keep touching them to reassure himself they’re real.

  This is the first time I’ve ever seen Frank lose his cool in any way at all and I am very much loving it. I gaze around, wondering where the ‘local vet’ in question is, but can’t see him anywhere.