by Susan Duncan
He watches her through narrowed eyes. Nearly a month, he thinks. Certainly not long enough to accurately call it a relationship but long enough to pin down what makes her tick and truthfully, he doesn’t have a clue. Some days, he feels unspooled like a yo-yo. Wound in tightly one moment and unraveled the next.
Up ahead on the mainland shore, The Briny Café tilts haphazardly eastwards, blasted every August by winds straight from the South Pole. It’s haloed by a shimmery heat haze or sea mist: he’s not sure which. He points the bow towards it, noting for the umpteenth time that the warped and rusty corrugated-iron roof badly needs replacing. If the café’s new owners can continue their promising start through the short dark days of winter, when locals rush past to avoid bumping blindly home over a black sea, he’ll gently suggest it.
He swings the barge alongside the creaky rear deck, throws a rope around an oyster-crusted pile worn needle-thin by more than a century of tides. Ties up. Picks his way through a motley collection of tables and chairs, cast-offs donated by Cutter Islanders: the financial status of the café is still precarious. Arrives at the café’s private pontoon in perfect time to help Kate, who’s drifted dockside with a centimetre to spare, secure her boat. Not such a novice any more, then.
‘You look a million dollars,’ he blurts, happy to see her. She looks at him blankly. ‘The clobber,’ he continues, steadier now. ‘Nice jacket, trousers well cut. Silk shirt that’s seen the flat side of a hot iron, for chrissake. First-rate professional gear. And those heels will knock the bluff out of any lawyer.’
Kate glances at her clothes as if she’s seeing them for the first time. ‘The heels are tame, Sam. Trust me. And city people will take one look at my shaggy hair and see country hick at a hundred paces.’
‘You’ll knock ’em dead, love. You’re a dead-set star turn. Sure you don’t want me to come with you?’ A tinny roars past. The wake strikes out and whacks the pontoon with a thump. He thrusts out a hand, huge, scarred, sunburned to a crisp, and grabs her arm to keep her steady. ‘Freaking moron,’ he mutters. ‘One born every day.’
‘Gotta run, Sam. I’ll call you.’ Her slight figure disappears up the gangplank, the sun casting blue highlights on sleek black hair. He sighs. She might have let him get away with the moron bit but the one born every day was a lay down misère loser line. Made him sound like a die-hard whinger looking back on years of disappointments when all he really cares about is her wellbeing. He glares as the renegade tinny is noisily rammed into a row of equally decrepit boats further along the sandstone seawall at commuter boat dock. Feels an uncharacteristically violent urge to garrotte the driver. Love does your head in, there’s no doubt about it.
Had they met in her former life as a globe-trotting journalist interviewing the men and women who make the top-end decisions, he is painfully aware Kate would never have given him anything more committed than a nod. Blame the sea. The sun. Summer madness brought on by the warm and sexy north wind, he thinks, not sure whether to curse or bless it. Essentially, they are an improbable coupling: a journalist and a bargeman. One end of the cultural stratosphere and the other.
He’d read the signs last night. Never mind the frigidly cold beer that was shoved hospitably in his mitt the second he walked through her front door. Never mind the cosy dinner with candles that smelled like a French tart – the kind you scooped onto a spoon with plenty of thick cream – and never mind the fact that, after less than a month, you’d expect to skip the foreplay and head straight for the main course. Which was the giveaway, when he thought about it. A barrage of social rituals aimed at softening the news that she’d prefer him to cross the enclosed waters between Oyster Bay and Cutter Island to sleep in his own empty bed. Feinting and demurring when all she had to do was say she felt like a night alone, thanks very much. At least he hopes she meant a night alone and nothing with more of a nasty streak of longevity attached to it.
‘Just spit it out straight and to the point, Kate,’ he’d told her, trying to lighten the load by smiling over the words. She’d given him a look that was part relief and part ice because he’d seen through the rigmarole and seized the upper hand. ‘Old habits,’ she said. ‘Journos spend their entire careers coming in from oblique angles to arrive at the main point.’ (Jeez, he thinks now, the media is a roaring cacophony of white noise that no one trusts for that very reason.)
Later, crossing plate-glass water under stars that snatched away the importance of any human-sized moments, he’d wondered if she believed sneaking towards the main goal had its own nobility. If she did he was in for some rough crossings.
He shakes himself like a half-drowned dog. He isn’t himself this morning. A lonely night in a bed where the sheets needed changing and the dust was thick on the floorboards – he slaps the palm of his hand against his forehead, eyes squeezed tight with relief. No coffee yet. No wonder he’s ratty. The caffeine fix is long overdue. A large mug with a double shot is all that’s required to set him back on track. If it’s combined with one of Ettie’s fragrant raspberry muffins, he’ll be a happy man. Sex or no sex last night.
‘Ettie,’ he shouts through the patched flyscreen door of The Briny, ‘I’m a man who’s teetering dangerously on the edge of complete physical collapse from lack of proper nourishment. A coffee and one of those delicious raspberry muffins that turns a dull morning into pure ecstasy. If you please.’
But he can’t shake the niggling feeling that a forty-year-old man who turns himself inside out for the love of a woman is headed for the kind of beating that leaves him crippled for life.
Ettie Brookbank, the aging hippy co-owner of The Briny Café, is dealing with a long queue of tradies. With Kate en route to the big smoke to sort out her mother’s last will and testament, god help the girl, she’s knee deep in orders without any back-up and everyone in a tearing hurry because it’s Monday and they’re late for work and ferociously hung over.
One-handed, she cracks eggs on the smoking hot flat-plate, checking the whites are firm, the glossy yolks perky – which means the supplier isn’t trying to slip her dud stock while she’s not looking. She lines up ten bread rolls like roundly plump soldiers, loads them with bacon strips and scrambled eggs. Her homemade tomato chutney is spooned on top. She gets a whiff of the spices. Mustard seeds. Cumin. Cinnamon. Fennel seeds. Mixed in with a cayenne pepper kick that would wake the dead. As good a cure-all as her famous chicken soup. For hangovers anyway. Ten bleary-eyed blokes, barely out of their teens, with hair sticking out from their sunburned scalps like corn stalks and wearing groin-skimming Stubbies that only serve to emphasise their knobbly knees, pounce on the food like starving dogs. ‘Thanks, Ettie. Ya saved the day.’ She shakes her head, tempted to warn them about the evils of alcohol but bites her tongue. Not so long ago, the number of mornings that found her with a blinding headache had been turning into more of a problem than a social ritual.
The young fellas exit the café, a ragged platoon, grease running down their sharp young chins. A lone straggler, avoiding Ettie’s eyes, mumbles a request for the price of a buttered roll. He’s broke, she thinks, and he’s ashamed to admit it in front of the others. ‘Yesterday’s are free,’ she says. With her back to him, she reaches for fresh bread, fills it with ham, cheese and tomato. Whacks the sandwich in a white paper bag and twists the corners. ‘There you go. Would’ve had to toss it to the fish so you’ve done me a favour.’ He hesitates. Unsure. ‘Quick, off you go,’ she adds, ‘or you’ll be left behind.’
He nods his thanks. Taking a quick break, she follows him out of the café and watches as he races off towards a small armada of barely seaworthy tinnies, outboards raspy as an old man’s last gasp. The tradies jump lightly on board and ship themselves off to various building sites. Spilling not a single drop of Ettie’s famously frothy cappuccinos.
She makes a mental note to keep an eye out for the straggler tomorrow morning. He has the look of a half-starved dog. Not long off one of the boats, she reckons. And she’s not talking about
cruising pleasure yachts.
While he waits for his order, Sam pulls a small book out of the back pocket of the shorts he wears year-round no matter how far the mercury dips, thinking it’s a bloody slim volume to claim it contains The Concise History of the World. Still, Kate told him once that she had a sub-editor who reckoned the bible could be cut back to twelve hundred words if you put your mind to it, so who was he, a bargeman who took his daily cues from the sky and sea, to judge? He silently chastises himself for referring to his beloved lighter as a barge. Habit. Tell people you have a lighter and they think you’re talking about a Bic. He’d always been a matches man back when he indulged in sweet-tasting rollie tobacco. The stuff that gave off a scent – now that he thinks of it – not unlike the candles Kate’d whipped out last night to soften him before giving him his marching orders. He feels his emotions spiralling downwards again. Opens The Concise History of the World to page one to take his mind off the precariousness of romance.
Global cooling around six million years ago wiped out tropical forests in sub-Sahara Africa and triggered the rise of savannahs. The change in environment saw the development of new carnivores and omnivores, including hominines, the ancestors of modern man.
He wonders what global warming will give rise to and quickly decides that on an evolutionary scale of six million years – or six hundred years, which seems to be the equivalent time-frame in the current high-speed world – it’s not going to be his problem. And, looking on the bright side, who knows what amazing creatures will evolve out of the heat and dust? His eyes track the glitter of a plastic bottle floating under the deck. He’s tempted to hazard a guess that wet footprints will be the next significant evolutionary step if the current epidemic of two-legged water guzzlers continues. The bottle emerges into daylight. Sam swoops on it like a hawk and heads inside the café to locate a bin.
Finding the café deserted, he leans on the polished counter and raises an eyebrow in hope.
‘Give me five,’ Ettie says, still looking frazzled, even though the pressure is off. ‘I’m having trouble getting my head sorted this morning. Monday, eh? Bugger, where did I put the oven mitt?’ She spins full circle. Wipes her brow. Goes bright pink.
‘No rush, love. Take your time. Er, the mitt’s in front of you. There.’ He points. Ettie snatches it up. ‘Bloody hell. Must be going blind,’ she says, crossly, her face beet-root now.
Sam grins, joking: ‘Senior moments compressing, eh?’
Ettie gives him a look that shrivels his kidneys.
In Bertie’s day, Sam recalls, the counter was a dusty mess of tins of antique baked beans, melted globs of sweets and green-fringed bread. Cantankerous old bastard that he was, he’d done the right thing by selling The Briny to Ettie for a knockdown price. Understood money wasn’t much use to a dying man and he might as well do something useful before the rock-hard knobs that had latched onto his lungs cut off his oxygen supply forever.
The community had rocked in shock when Ettie announced she was taking on Kate as a partner. The woman was newly arrived and more inclined towards loner than joiner, so everyone – him included – thought Ettie was nuts and that once again her instinct to nurture was over-riding her common sense. Kate couldn’t cook and even wearing jeans (ironed, razor creases) and a T-shirt (ironed, blinding white) she looked more corporate than café. For Ettie’s sake, they’d all given Kate the benefit of the doubt and she’s done a good job, he admits. Slipped into dishes, mops and waitressing without a quibble. Even learned a couple of failsafe recipes (her spaghetti Bolognese with finely diced celery and carrots was right up there with Ettie’s). But skills are really just window dressing. Personalities – their hard core – might broaden but do they ever switch gears completely? Truthfully, if he had to put money either way, he still wouldn’t know how to place his bet.
‘You heard the news?’ Ettie asks, lining up two white china mugs, punching the espresso machine and plating up a raspberry muffin in one fluid movement that’s as much about instinct as practice.
‘What news?’ he asks, his neck twisted sideways so he can read the newspaper headlines without bothering to pick up a copy from the stack under the counter.
Ettie turns off the steam, wipes the spout: ‘They’re going to build a bridge to Cutter Island then plonk a flash resort in the middle of Garrawi Park.’
‘Eh?’ Sam jerks up from the headlines so quickly pain shoots up his neck to his head. ‘You’re joking, right? Setting me up for some shocker community job like carting Portaloos to the next big fundraiser so it looks good in comparison.’
‘Serious as,’ Ettie says. ‘Check out the development notice in the Square. Found it there first thing this morning. Thought someone was having me on but Fast Freddy says he ferried two dark-suited blokes with a fistful of posters and pamphlets around the public wharves in the dead of night. Looks like it’s a fact all right.’
‘Where’s Freddy now?’
Ettie slides Sam’s mug across the counter and picks up her own. Takes a long sip, shoulders rounded, hands circling the hot creamy brew like it’s winter instead of midsummer outside. In a dry voice, she says: ‘Think about it, Sam. He’s a water-taxi driver who comes off a twelve-hour night shift at first light. He’s where he is every morning by nine o’clock. Racking up the zzz’s.’
Kate finds the address she’s searching for located between a fast-food joint and a (borderline) porno lingerie shop. Limp hamburgers and even limper sugar-coated fries (to turn them golden instead of brown, according to a story she once wrote about the hidden ingredients in fast food) alongside fire-engine red frilly knickers, shiny black boots with metal stiletto heels, rubber aprons (not the kitchen clean-up variety), and lacy corsets. She checks the scribbled note in her hand to make sure she’s not mistaken and pushes open a dirty glass door. She wonders how on earth Emily, who revered glitz and glamour and judged everyone and everything by appearances, managed to put aside her prejudices to engage the services of Mr Sly. This is low-rent territory at best, slum territory at worst. Without the shadowy existence of a brother she’s hoping to either confirm or deny, she probably would have done a runner. She tells herself to expect nothing, a lesson she learned early to avoid the disappointment of forgotten birthdays, worthless promises and – at best – an abstract acknowledgement of her existence. Out of the blue, she has a sudden and completely uncharacteristic compulsion to whitewash the facts – or did she mean acts? – of the dead. Dead. Not passed, which seems to be the new, dreadfully twee and slightly ambiguous euphemism for an essentially unambiguous state. What is, after all, uncertain about lying six feet under a marble slab? Emily hasn’t passed by, she hasn’t passed the salt and pepper, she will never again sail past in a froth of floral chiffon and a cloud of complicated millinery and heavy perfume. Kate angrily wipes a tear off her cheek. Surely she doesn’t feel guilty for outliving her volatile mother. It is, after all, part of the natural order. Emily is dead. Move on. Survival of the fittest. It was ever thus. Law, according to Emily. So why the empty hole in the centre of her chest? The dull ache that constricts her throat? Why the awful, tippy feeling that nothing is quite in alignment any more?
Kate finds the office of Sly & Son easily. So absurdly Dickensian, she thinks, wondering whether names go hand in hand with careers or vice versa. She wonders if Emily was attracted by the irony of hiring a firm with a title that accurately summed up the dodging and weaving that made up the fabric of her existence. Probably not. Emily was never a deep thinker. Devious, yes, but not deep. Kate swallows, clenches her fists and angrily wipes away another tear, appalled by the see-sawing going on between her head and heart, reminding herself of the pointlessness of regret. Death changes everything, she thinks, and nothing.
She knocks lightly. Opens the door swiftly and decisively without waiting for an invitation. ‘Hello,’ she says brightly to the aged receptionist who points her index finger at a seat without a word of acknowledgement.
After a while a tall man, probably
in his early forties, wearing a well-cut charcoal suit – Armani or a good copy that’s lounge-lizard sleek – emerges from an office. Kate assumes he’s a client on the way out. More well-heeled than she would’ve expected given the location. An observation, she reassures herself, not one of Emily’s snap judgments.
‘Ms Jackson? Neville Sly. My father looked after your mother’s affairs until he retired a few months ago. On the face of it, it all seems pretty simple. Would you like tea? Coffee? No? OK, let’s proceed then.’
‘Great.’
‘It’s not a complicated will,’ Mr Sly adds. ‘She’s left everything to you.’
‘No mention of anyone else?’
He looks surprised. ‘No. It’s quite clear. Just you. As soon as outstanding debts are paid and probate is cleared, the estate will be settled.’
‘Thanks.’ Kate gets up, holds out her hand politely.
‘Aren’t you going to ask about the value of the estate?’
Mr Sly sounds less smooth, more shocked, which makes Kate wonder how most of his clients respond to the news they’re sole beneficiaries. ‘There can’t be much. Enough to pay your fees, I hope, but if not, don’t worry, I’ll settle the account.’
Mr Sly is thoughtful. ‘I see. Odd then. After everything is taken care of, our fees included, there should be a balance remaining of about $70,000.’
‘I beg your pardon?’ It’s got to be a cock-up, she thinks. He’s muddled her up with some other client. ‘Are you sure? We’re talking about Emily Jackson, right?’
‘We don’t make mistakes, Ms Jackson,’ he says tersely.
‘Sorry, I’m in shock.’
The idea of Emily hoarding cash when she had a lifetime history of scatterbrain financial profligacy that consistently involved running up debts and then stepping back until first Kate’s father and then Kate bailed her out is baffling. Emily was a born squanderer. Unable to resist the sparkle of pretty trinkets, the lure of a silken fabric. Kate, who thought through the long-term ramifications of even the smallest purchase – an instinctive mechanism to counter her mother’s extremes, in all probability – frantically scrabbles back through Emily’s history, trying to find a possible source for this kind of windfall. As far as she is aware, the family fortune, such as it was (her father’s small country grocery shop wasn’t worth much in the days before they morphed into trendy bakeries serving exotic teas and a mind-boggling range of flavoured coffees), was frittered away in one failed Emily-inspired business venture after another. To put it mildly, money turned to dust in her hands. At least that’s what she’d thought until now.