The Summerhouse by the Sea

by Jenny Oliver

  ‘This . . .’ Flora carried on, hand sweeping across the bar space, the dark industrial gothic chic, ‘this was his vision, not mine. When I look at it all I see is my money. My naivety. My stupidity. Maxy, be a darling and lean forwards and flick that light switch will you, that one there on the wall.’

  Max stretched as far across the bar as he could to where Flora was pointing and pressed the switch on. Fluorescent lights under the bar shone red, illuminating more smaller graffiti bulls’ heads.

  ‘Cool,’ Max grinned.

  ‘Dreadful,’ Flora sighed. ‘And do you want to know how much that cost me? No, I can’t even say it. It’s too depressing. What’s so strange is that something – are you recording? Have we started yet?’

  Rory nodded. He crossed the room and went to pick up the camera next to Max.

  ‘No, I want to do it,’ Max said with a firm whine.

  Rory paused. ‘How about I start and then you can take over?’ he said with forced diplomacy.

  ‘No, you said I could do it.’

  Rory’s hand was itching to get hold of the camera.

  Flora was clearly keen to carry on with her sentence.

  Max said, ‘Otherwise I just sit here doing nothing. I want to do it.’

  Rory swallowed. This was his thing.

  But this was his son.

  ‘OK,’ he said, stepping back. ‘OK, you do it.’

  Max beamed as he hoisted the camera on to his shoulder and pointed it at Flora, who immediately carried on with what she’d been saying.

  ‘What’s so strange,’ she said again, ‘is seeing something that once held all your dreams, where you saw yourself getting old and still being happy, change into something so completely and utterly opposite to that.’

  Rory was trying to listen, but he could see the camera wobbling on Max’s shoulder. He was envisioning the shake on film. And what he half-heard, he was also trying really hard not to align with his own life. Rory had seen his future. It was there in his head like the AA Route Planner. He had always known he was going from A to B, in roughly this amount of time, barring any major incidents or illnesses.

  ‘And for you, this place represents that?’ Rory asked, tearing his focus away from Max.

  Flora shrugged a yes.

  ‘It’s a real shame,’ he said, ‘because when I was last here, I wouldn’t have said that this place was all Ricardo. It was you as well. Ask me then and I’d have said you could have done this on your own. Easily. It wasn’t just his dream.’

  ‘I know, but I’m tired, Rory. I’m tired,’ she said. ‘It’s exhausting.’

  ‘What is?’ Max piped up, clearly a bit confused.

  ‘Being so utterly furious, darling, all the time,’ she said with a laugh and a smack of her hot pink notebook.

  Max grinned. ‘Maybe now you can get your own back, on camera. Say something mean about him.’

  Rory wondered if this was in fact the best environment for his ten-year-old after all.

  Flora guffawed. ‘What a marvellous idea.’ She thought for a second then leant forwards, smiling, and said, ‘Well, the bandana is to hide an ever-increasing bald spot. He says it’s his trademark, but it’s a hundred per cent because of his hair. Of course I told him no one would notice, but they definitely would . . .’ She chuckled to herself.

  Rory shot a quick glance at his own hair in the mirror behind the bar. Claire was always telling him not to panic when he examined it for signs of thinning. Is this what separation would be like? Finding out that everything you’ve ever reassured each other about was a lie? Maybe the shirts he wore were too young for him? Maybe his stubble wasn’t sexy with bits of grey in it? Shit, he thought, self-consciously covering his jaw with his hand.

  ‘And another thing, he’s utterly obsessed with Jamie Oliver. Can’t handle him at all. Desperate to be as famous as him. Shouts at the television when he’s on. Even started doing little affectations with his voice, you know, all pally and chatty? I caught him practising it in the mirror once and had to gently put a stop to it. This is quite liberating. Gosh. What else? Oh, well, there’s always the obvious, he has a much smaller willy than one might think—’

  ‘OK, that’s enough.’ Rory strode over and tried to prise the camera from Max.

  ‘What?’ Max protested, clutching on tight.

  ‘Exactly – what?’ Flora echoed. ‘It’s just a bit of fun. Max knows what willies are, don’t you, Max? And if he doesn’t, he should.’ Flora arched a perfect brow and Max blushed and giggled. ‘Leave the camera alone and don’t be such a prude, Rory.’

  Rory frowned. He’d almost grappled the camera away from his son and was reluctant to hand it back.

  Flora watched him. ‘We’re not making a masterpiece, Rory.’

  ‘No, but we want to make something,’ he replied.

  ‘And we will,’ Flora said, in such a commanding tone that it made Rory stop and listen. ‘But we’ll laugh as we do it.’

  Rory was very rarely told what to do. A little abashed by the ticking off, he found himself relaxing his hold on the camera and stepping away.

  The waiter, Igor, marched past with no thought to the filming in progress and started banging and bashing with the coffee machine behind the bar.

  ‘Igor, darling, we’re filming,’ said Flora. ‘Do you have to make so much noise?’

  Igor made a face. ‘People need coffee.’

  ‘I need coffee,’ said Flora, her skin-tight dress impeding her movements as she tried to get up gracefully from her chair. ‘Rory, do you want one?’ she asked, smoothing herself down.

  Rory nodded, ‘I’ll have one.’

  ‘And grab a pastry. Sorry, darlings, I totally forgot to offer you breakfast. Max, take, take, take, whatever you like.’

  Max did not have to be told twice. Putting the camera down, he started piling his plate with chocolate twists, then put a few back when he caught Rory’s eye.

  All the regulars had started to slope in. The squeak of Gabriela’s pug on wheels was the first, then Rosa with her huge bag of knitting.

  Igor finished frothing the milk, wiped down the nozzle and picked up the three cups of coffee from the machine. ‘You can carry on now,’ he said to Max, who nodded, half a chocolate twist in his mouth.

  Flora, who was sipping the espresso she’d made, gestured towards Igor and said, ‘Now there’s someone who was very pleased to see the back of Ricardo. Igor and Ric did not see eye to eye on many things.’

  Igor made a face and said something in Spanish, which Flora agreed with, then went outside with his tray of coffees and sticky pastries, muttering under his breath.

  ‘Not the happiest of chaps,’ Flora said, watching as Igor thwacked coffees down on various tables, ‘but very loyal. You should see him. He’s got these three little girls, all under five, I think. All black curls and podgy little legs. He adores them.’

  Rory looked at Igor with some scepticism, watched him grumbling from table to table, arguing in Spanish with Rosa and the walrus-moustache man. ‘Really? Igor does?’

  ‘Oh yes. I think all this grumpy business . . .’ she pointed towards Igor grimacing and shaking his head, ‘is basically boredom. I tell him to go and get another job, but he won’t leave. If he wasn’t so happily married I’d say he was in love with me as well.’

  Rory’s lips twitched in amusement. Flora winked and gave her hair a pat. Max said, ‘Why is everyone in love with you, Flora?’

  ‘Because I’m bloody marvellous,’ she said, then laughed. ‘It’s been a while since I’ve thought that.’ She shook her hair like a horse. ‘Gosh, I feel almost high. Giddy. Like I’ve been at Ric’s wacky backcy.’

  Max frowned and looked at his dad, confused. Rory was standing with one elbow propped up on the bar, and he shook his head a touch to suggest that Flora was a bit mad and that Max should just ignore her. Max sniggered to himself.

  Gabriela was bending down to unclip the pug from his wheels, and when she looked up with the dog in her arms and
saw Max holding the camera, asked, ‘What’s going on here?’

  Flora did a little half-twirl and said, ‘Filming, Gabriela. A documentary about me.’

  ‘Why?’ Gabriela looked suspicious.

  ‘To try and make the café marvellous again,’ Flora said.

  Gabriela scoffed. ‘Well, that’s going to take more than a film.’

  Flora looked suddenly mortified. Embarrassed by her own exuberance.

  ‘It’s hard work, Flora, hard work that’ll make something great. You’ve got to put the work in,’ Gabriela said, glancing around at the dingy décor. ‘I’ve told her to get rid of it. Sell it, start again,’ she added to Rory. ‘Hasn’t been the same since he left. People can sense unhappiness, sniff it a mile away.’

  Flora stroked back her hair and inhaled a shaky breath. ‘See what I have to put up with,’ she said to Rory and Max, voice over bright.

  On the wall the fly strip hummed as a wasp got caught in the fluorescent lines.

  ‘Remember there’ll be no more breakfast if I don’t have the café, Gabriela,’ Flora added, clearly hoping for something affirming in reply.

  Gabriela shrugged. ‘I’ll be dead soon anyway,’ she said, and turned round to go and sit with Rosa, who was already asking what they were talking about.

  Rory watched them looking round the place, nodding. Saw them point at the cracks in the ceiling, the curl of damp wallpaper. Rosa wobbled the table with her hand to make a point of its faults. The wasp tried to free itself from the zapping wall trap. Rory couldn’t look Flora in the eye.

  No one said anything for a good minute. Max shifted uncomfortably on his stool. Rory ran his hand over his mouth, trying to think of the best way to steer the chat. Flora stood behind the bar, sipping her coffee, visibly deflated. As he watched her, Rory realised that this was Flora stripped of the show-pony bravado.

  He shifted his weight, tried to act nonchalant as he glanced to Max to check the red light on the camera was on. Max nodded as soon as he caught his dad’s eye, which made Rory smile inside.

  Rory cleared his throat. ‘Do you do much cooking, Flora?’ he asked.

  Flora examined her nails. ‘No. No, not as much as I did.’

  A fly landed on the pastries in the basket. Flora leant forwards and flicked it away.

  If Rory had been filming he’d have filmed the fly. But then he would have missed Flora tie her hair back then remember she was being filmed and quickly take it down again with an exaggerated flounce. He would have missed that little moment of her, which Max had caught.

  What was it Ava had said? There’s more than your way, Rory.

  ‘So why aren’t you cooking?’ he asked, trying to keep focused.

  ‘I think you need a lot of confidence to be a chef,’ Flora said, running her hand along the counter top. ‘A good chef. And . . .’ She paused. ‘Well, I think maybe when you’ve believed in someone and trusted them and then that goes, you perhaps lose confidence in your own judgement. Every time I’ve stepped into a kitchen to do something – something proper – I’ve just been second-guessing myself. There’s a little Ricardo sitting on my shoulder saying, “Not like that, you idiot” or “You think they’d want to eat that?”’

  She said it all in great humour. Rory waited, listening. Max turned to check that he wasn’t meant to be doing anything more, and Rory gave him a nod to just sit tight, camera steady. He was quite enjoying having this little sidekick; it was easy to work with someone who had half the same brain as him.

  Flora took a sip of coffee, put the cup down, scratched her head, licked her lips, then as the silence hung she eventually said, ‘We started getting knocks. People started saying exactly what I’d imagined Ric might say. You know how you were yesterday with Twitter?’

  Rory had not thought about Twitter all day and the reminder was a kick in the gut. He nodded.

  ‘That’s how I was about bloody TripAdvisor. Golly, they ripped me to shreds some of them. And it’s addictive. So I know how you felt.’ She looked down at her blurred reflection on the counter top and then covered it with her hand before looking back up at Rory. ‘What hurt the most was that some of them were old regulars. People who’d been coming here every year. I don’t understand why they didn’t give me the benefit of the doubt. Let me try and make it better in time. I don’t know. Everyone’s a critic now, aren’t they? Maybe I shouldn’t even have read it all, but then that lot opened up over there and we became like Team Flora and Team Nino. But there was no one on my team apart from this lot and Igor.’ With a sweep of her arm she encompassed the knitters and chess players. ‘I think my mistake was trying to keep his menu,’ Flora sighed. ‘It was silly. I couldn’t cook like him, but that’s what people were coming for. They wanted his soft-shell crab and the vodka octopus, and if it wasn’t on the menu they felt they’d been hard done by, felt like it was a wasted trip. It was pretty much no win. Again, like you with the tweets. It’s hard to watch your dream dissolve.’

  Rory winced again.

  He remembered the vodka octopus. It had been sensational. Under normal circumstances he would have been disappointed not to find it on her menu. He too might have ventured next door in protest.

  He looked at Max holding the camera. Thought about the snippet he’d seen of himself filming the day before, wondering, as he had looked at Flora, whether that person still existed. He’d been so confident that strong, vibrant Flora was in there somewhere. Perhaps, he thought as he downed the rest of his espresso, it was up to him to help beckon her out of hiding, and maybe they’d stumble across the past version of him along the way. It was that simple hope that made Rory say, ‘How about we find our confidence together, Flora?’

  Flora tossed her hair back with a frown.

  ‘Us,’ Rory said, ‘in there.’ He nodded to the empty kitchen.

  ‘Yeah! Do it!’ said Max, jumping down off his stool.

  Rory held back a comment about the camera shake.

  ‘Go on, Flora,’ Max said, pointing the camera up at her.

  ‘Oh, that’ll be a very bad angle, Maxy,’ Flora said, trying to shield her chin and stepping back but finding herself blocked by the coffee machine. ‘No. I don’t know. I can’t cook in this dress,’ she said, looking down at her pale blue frock as if she had stumbled on the perfect excuse.

  ‘Put an apron on,’ said Rory.

  ‘Dad wants to be on MasterChef,’ said Max.

  Rory made a mental note to edit that line out as soon as possible.

  Flora was still uncertain. ‘Really, I haven’t cooked in ages.’

  ‘Come on,’ said Rory, a little softer, warming to the idea of getting into the kitchen. He cooked every night he was home. It was part therapy, to switch his brain off from the stresses of work, and part because he knew Claire loved everything he made. It had been their little joke that she’d never leave him because she couldn’t live without his stroganoff. The idea of winning her back through kitchen prowess seemed a little far-fetched now the joke was a semi-reality, but there was a sliver there, enough to tug him towards the hob. His memories of Flora and Ricardo in this specific kitchen had been Rory’s Spain. The two of them snogging in front of the flaming hobs, bum squeezing, sweat pouring, wine gulping. OK, they hadn’t lasted as a couple, but in their heyday they had had energy, passion and excitement. Shouting, laughing, smoking, swearing. When Rory cooked now it was to Radio Four with a nice glass of Pinot Noir.

  There must have been something in his expression to show Flora that this was as much for him as it was for her, because she suddenly stood up straight, shimmied the wrinkles out of her dress and said, ‘OK, come on then. What have we got to lose?’ She marched into the kitchen, all giant cleavage and faux-bravado. Rory followed, then Max with the camera.

  But the cold, drab nothingness of the kitchen was an instant downer on Rory’s burgeoning memories. He wanted dark and dingy, hot and close; to hear butter sizzling in the pans and chillies chopped nineteen to the dozen. He lifted Max up to sit on
the corner of the work surface and noticed the mark his hands made in the dust.

  Flora yanked open the fridge. ‘There’s not really that much food in here,’ she said.

  Rory glanced around. It was depressingly bare besides some milk, big tubs of olives and packets of tortilla and serrano ham.

  ‘Oh well,’ Flora said, happy for fate to have kyboshed the plan. ‘Shall we go back out front?’

  Max’s little face fell.

  Rory stared despondently out the dirty window. Of course they could go and buy ingredients then reconvene at another time, but there was something crucial about the spontaneity of this. Something precious in the fact that Flora hadn’t had time to prepare. And Rory knew himself well enough to know that spur-of-the-moment wasn’t his strong point, so an idea such as this should be grasped before there was time to analyse and dismiss it. If it didn’t happen now it felt as though it never would; next time he would be behind the camera and Flora’s Friday night chef drafted in.

  Then through the grimy glass Rory caught sight of a sliver of foliage. ‘Have you still got the vegetable garden, Flora?’

  Flora made a face. ‘Sort of,’ she said a little guiltily.

  They all trooped outside. The sun was scorching hot. Blistering. Blinding white on the eyes. Rory made Max stand in the shade because he didn’t have any suntan lotion on. The hum of the cicadas felt like the noise of heat itself.

  In front of them was a small vegetable patch and a decrepit greenhouse that had once been a verdant oasis, rich with nearly every vegetable imaginable, micro-managed by Ricardo’s obsessive hand. There had been polytunnels and neatly written labels, intricately woven willow frames and immaculate beds with rows of perfectly manicured crops. Now, hanging on a couple of old bits of bamboo were some forlorn-looking tomatoes and a couple of fly-ridden green beans. Frazzled weeds crunched underfoot as they walked the network of paths, avoiding half-eaten peaches and rotting lemons that had fallen from the surrounding trees.