by Jenny Colgan
Polly thought, going back to the lighthouse again, how lonely it’d be to turn up with something so fantastic – Nan the Van! – when Huckle wasn’t there to exclaim how brilliant it was, nor Neil to hop around it and give it a good old explore. Maybe it would be tonight, she thought. Maybe tonight the little puffin would find his way home. Maybe he’d gone via Reuben’s old place. He liked it there too. But he was coming back. She knew it.
When she finally got Huckle on the phone, he sounded absolutely exhausted, but very pleased.
‘Did you really bargain him down to half price?’ he said incredulously. ‘Polly, you didn’t show him your legs, did you?’
‘No!’ said Polly. ‘It just turns out I am a naturally brilliant negotiator. Amazing, huh? You didn’t think I had it in me.’
‘Hmm,’ said Huckle. ‘What does she look like under the bonnet?’
‘Um, great,’ said Polly. It hadn’t even occurred to her to look at the engine, and she wouldn’t have known what to look for if she had.
‘Pol,’ said Huckle. ‘You are lying to me! Are you sure you haven’t actually brought home a packet of magic beans that you’re going to plant in the garden and the man said a van would definitely grow out of them?’
‘No!’ said Polly. ‘I’d send you the photo if the Internet connection didn’t mean it would take eight hours to arrive.’
‘Eight hours is fine,’ said Huckle. ‘I don’t mind.’
‘It’s not magic beans.’
‘Is it possibly two halves of two different vans, soldered together?’
‘I can’t believe you doubt my amazing powers of negotiation,’ said Polly. ‘Also I wish I’d told you I got it for four grand and pocketed the difference.’
‘Adding theft to lying,’ mused Huckle. ‘You are a naughty girl.’
Polly smiled.
‘Will I be properly punished when you get home?’
‘Oh yes,’ said Huckle, staring at the great big pile of government forms and paperwork he’d brought home from town, which should all have been completed months ago. ‘I expect so.’
‘Can’t you come home now? Now we’ve got the van? I can get loads of supplies with the rest of the money, and Jayden says he doesn’t see why I shouldn’t have all the leftover herbs and spices from the bakery, seeing as they don’t bake fresh any more – it wouldn’t be stealing, they don’t use them, they’re just sitting there. So we could just start, and you could come home.’
‘Businesses don’t just start,’ said Huckle. ‘You took over a going concern before. It doesn’t normally work like that. You’re going to have ages when you’ll have quiet days and off days and nobody even turning up. It’s not even the summer season yet. You’ll need cash to keep you going through that. Council tax is due. And the TV licence, even though, one, I have no idea why you Brits have to pay money for the TV, and two, you never watch it.’
‘Force of habit,’ mumbled Polly. ‘Also, if you don’t pay it, they put you in prison.’
‘I am so glad I have committed my life to this place,’ said Huckle gravely. Polly heard doors opening and chatter in the background. ‘Okay, I have to go.’
‘Uh, totally,’ said Polly, as if she too were busy, rather than having absolutely nothing to do for the entire evening except rattle round an empty lighthouse, half watching telly with dreadful reception, feeling alone, and fighting – and eventually giving in to – the desire to eat the rest of the gingerbread. ‘Bye, my love.’
‘And to you,’ said Huckle.
Huckle hung up the phone and headed back into the farmhouse kitchen. Clemmie was sitting there wearing an old linen dress, her stout boots by the door. She was looking tired and beaten down. She looked up at Huckle, her voice soft, and very Southern.
‘Huckle, while he was over there… did he… I mean, was there another girl?’
Huckle put his hands up.
‘You’d have to ask him,’ he said. He absolutely didn’t want to get involved in this kind of thing. Clemmie’s soft eyes grew even sadder, as she passed him a huge plate of ribs with a baked potato. She sighed.
‘You know, you could pass the farm on,’ said Huckle. ‘Once I’ve got it sorted out. Once it’s on its feet again. You could sell the stewardship as a going concern, head back to the city.’
Clemmie shook her head.
‘No,’ she said. ‘This is ours.’
Then she looked up at him and touched her stomach.
‘And this is ours too.’
She hadn’t even been showing.
‘Oh, Clem,’ said Huckle, his heart nearly breaking for her. He wanted to hunt down his brother and knock some sense into him.
‘Does he know?’
She shook her head.
‘I want to tell him face to face.’
Huckle thought painfully of his promise to Polly: to sort things out, to make a little money, to come straight home. Suddenly he resented being stuck in the steamy humidity of Georgia whilst Polly was sitting on a rock enjoying the fresh sunshine and chill wind of his beloved Cornwall. He wanted to be there with her.
He cleared the table for Clemmie, who immediately fell asleep in an armchair. He put a blanket over her and went upstairs. But he couldn’t sleep. There was no air conditioning in the tiny spare room.
He lay awake listening to the cicadas, worrying – what if Dubose didn’t come back? What would he do then? – and listing all the work that had to be done the next day. Having grown up on a farm, Huckle was under no illusion as to how tough it was. Which was why his mother was so desperate for him to be out of the game, into an office job. But being indoors was no use to him either. Really he just wanted to be… He thought back to a day the previous year – in fact it must have been Polly’s birthday, the real one, not a silly fake one. It had been the day he had finally got that fricking bath installed.
They couldn’t afford the lovely claw-foot bath that Polly craved – the bathroom had a window out to sea, and she dreamt of lying and gazing out across the water. But then, a few days before her birthday, Huckle had been clearing out some old hives from a grand house that had been sold off for apartments. The builders had moved in, and he had seen it. It wasn’t the fancy type that everyone wanted to pretend was reclaimed; it was a genuine, ancient, enormous old copper can, the type that at one time wouldn’t even have been plumbed in. He regarded it with awe.
‘I know, what a lot of old shit,’ said the builder, marching past him, carrying a length of copper piping. ‘Honestly, almost everything is reclaimable these days; you can sell any old tat for a fortune and those idiots think they’re getting something bloody special. But that…’
‘Um,’ said Huckle. ‘Actually…’
It had been bigger than the sidecar, so he had had to drive back incredibly carefully, with the enormous bath balanced upright like a giant, bound down with ropes. It was not safe. It was not even vaguely safe. Every driver passing him honked their horn and called him an utter fricking idiot. It fell off when he turned left round a corner. It took him twenty-four hours to plumb the bloody thing in without water going everywhere. Neil had adored the entire enterprise, never hiding his delighted surprise when yet another rivulet would drip and then gush from an unsoldered piece of pipe, and would waddle over and splash happily in it while Huckle cursed and swore and grabbed another piece of piping.
Finally, though, it was done. The brass, burnished up, shone beautifully in the pink early evening light: it was autumn, and the sun set early, but that day it was unusually clear. Polly was yawning after a long day at the bakery. People seemed to crave carbs at this time of year; she got a lot of requests to heat things up, too, which she happily obliged with, but it all took time. Jayden had pointed out that she could probably make a fortune simply by selling toasted cheese and large mugs of tea, and at one point she was seriously considering it.
Huckle had greeted her at the door, taken her hand and led her to the bathroom (from which she’d been banned for the last three days, having
to use the downstairs shower instead – although she was still getting used to the astonishing luxury of living in a house with two bathrooms, so hadn’t minded).
‘Are you saying I smell?’ said Polly who did, as always, smell absolutely gorgeous, of warm bread and cherry jam and icing sugar.
Huckle pushed open the door. He’d finally lit the hundred obligatory IKEA tea lights they’d picked up last year when doing some rudimentary furnishing. Around them he had arranged, for want of a flower shop in Mount Polbearne, fronds of fragrant heather from the sand dunes. He’d used half a bottle of the expensive bath oil Polly’s sister had sent her at Christmas, that Polly thought was too good to use, and had bought a bottle of the second cheapest Prosecco at Muriel’s shop. He couldn’t quite stretch to an ice bucket, but he’d popped out all the ice cubes they had into the sink and filled it up with cold water, which would have to do.
The copper bath tub, whilst very slightly resembling something out of Dr Frankenstein’s laboratory, nonetheless gleamed prettily in the candlelight, with the fragrant steam evaporating against the windows – curtainless, facing out on to the darkening sky. In the bath, despite the fact that the water was obviously far too hot for him, Neil was paddling cheerfully, making occasional bites at Polly’s rubber duck, whom he had fallen in love with, but who seemed oblivious to his advances.
Polly turned to Huckle and flung her arms around his neck.
‘That is the absolute best, best not-exactly-a-claw-foot-bath-more-of-a-tin birthday present I’ve ever had!’
‘Truly?’ said Huckle, looking down into her smiling face. ‘You wouldn’t rather we’d just saved up for a new one?’
Polly shook her head.
‘Is it watertight?’
‘Um, more or less,’ said Huckle, glancing at the pipes with some trepidation.
‘And you found it and put it together for me?’
He nodded. ‘Yup. Plumbing is hard.’
Polly was already pulling off her top.
‘I love it! I love it! I love it!’
Huckle picked up the Prosecco, then looked around.
‘Bugger,’ he said. ‘I forgot the glasses.’
‘The glasses two storeys down the freezing staircase?’ said Polly.
Huckle nodded.
‘We’ll use the tooth mug,’ she ordered. ‘Wash the toothpaste out first.’
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Huckle. ‘It might add a slight frisson to the flavour. Or improve it. It’s not very expensive Prosecco.’
Polly grinned.
‘Suits me.’
Naked, she was lovely in the candlelight, completely oblivious, Huckle thought, to the effect her naturalness achieved. She didn’t look perfect, not like the women in magazines – or his ex-girlfriend, Candice, who did nothing but work on how she looked. But Candice hated being naked, would never look at herself in a mirror without criticising all the imaginary flaws in her taut, relentlessly worked-out body. To Polly, being naked was just something you were when you didn’t have any clothes on. The wide curve of her hips was a beautiful thing to see.
‘Neil, out,’ she ordered.
Neil hopped on to the side of the bath, then eeped at her.
‘What? Oh,’ she said.
‘What is it?’ said Huckle.
‘He wants me to get rid of the duck too. Jealousy issues.’
Polly hurled the rubber duck out of the bath, whereupon Neil went for it and started dragging it by the beak out of the bathroom. Huckle watched him go.
‘Your bird is weird,’ he said.
Polly didn’t answer.
‘Have you washed the tooth mug?’
‘Yes!’ he said. ‘Shall I open…’
Polly slid into the water.
‘Oh my God, this is amazing,’ she said. ‘Ow.’
‘What was that?’
‘Rivet. Don’t worry about it, I love it. I’ll just avoid the rivets.’
She closed her eyes in happiness, and sank right under the water.
‘Oh GOD, a proper bath.’
There hadn’t been a proper one before, and her last flat had had a half bath in avocado, which was unpleasing in half a dozen different ways.
Huckle smiled at her as she gradually surfaced. She looked at him holding the bottle.
‘Don’t open it quite yet.’
He raised an eyebrow.
‘No?’
‘No. I think we should christen our bath.’
Huckle didn’t need asking twice. He pulled off his T-shirt. Polly smiled appreciatively, as she always did. She genuinely didn’t believe she’d met a more beautiful man in her entire life. He had a loose covering of golden hair on his chest, running down in a fine line across his flat stomach, and on down below his navel.
‘Watch the rivets,’ he said, somewhat hoarsely.
Later, Neil played for hours in the terrible soapy mess they left on the bathroom floor.
Huckle dozed, woke, glanced at his watch. It was early in England; she wouldn’t be awake yet. He wanted time for a long chat; to tell her how much he missed her whilst also breaking it to her that he would be a little while yet. He wished he hadn’t pushed her to take Neil to the sanctuary. He knew she thought the little puffin would come back any moment. Huckle didn’t.
Last year Neil had been a baby, making his way home to the person he thought was his mummy. This year he was a teenager; he no longer had any of the soft, ticklish brown puffling feathers Polly had loved rubbing. Huckle reckoned that girl – or other boy – puffins were going to be a much more interesting proposition. He wished Polly had a little company, particularly now Kerensa had gone back to work full time.
Hours later, with dawn slowly beginning to light the sky, and the men up and stirring in the yard, Huckle hauled himself painfully out of bed, washed his face in the little stand-alone sink, brushed his teeth, shrugged himself into his dungarees and padded downstairs in search of the strongest coffee available before he headed out to work. He had to leave all thoughts of Mount Polbearne far, far behind him. It would be a long time before he was going home.
Chapter Fifteen
It didn’t take long for Nan the Van to become a massive source of interest to the local community. There were not many vehicles on Mount Polbearne, and even less for children to do. Someone had suggested putting a swing park in the grounds of the ruined church at the top of the town, but this had been vetoed on the grounds of the whole World Heritage Site thing getting in the way. It was disappointing, but they did, everyone realised, have a point, in terms of what a see-saw might look like on the ancient silhouette of the proud tidal island community.
So coming to see the van became quite the outing, and Polly found herself most days trying to prise a child off the terribly tempting metal step to the cab, and considering a ‘Do Not Climb’ sign. Of course everyone being local and friends of hers, they didn’t consider for a moment that she might not be in the mood to have their children climbing all over her van, and Polly couldn’t possibly risk turning into Mrs Manse and telling them not to. So she just tried not to wince too much when they scuffed it.
She got Reuben round the first time she attempted to fire up the oven. He was furious she hadn’t taken him with her when she went to buy the van.
‘I’d have got it down for you,’ he said crossly. ‘You know I am totally the best at business and all of that. You were very dumb, Polly. That cost you a lot of money.’
Polly nodded.
‘So what did you get it for?’
‘Oh, better than half price,’ said Polly airily. Reuben was silent for two seconds, which was about the maximum time Polly had ever known him silent.
‘Huh,’ he said. ‘Well, I could totally have done better than that.’
He could have, too. Polly dreaded to think about poor Evan, left in his tatty little house, playing his computer, with two pounds fifty from Reuben counted out in coppers in his pocket.
‘I know,’ she said, then turned to him with her most a
ppealing look. ‘But I thought you’d probably be best at lighting the oven.’
She had borrowed the fire extinguisher – the really big one, for if the lighthouse got bombed by a foreign power or a plane crashed into it – just for safety. It had taken her half an hour to lug it down the stairs.
‘Okay,’ she said. ‘I think I’m ready.’
In fact she was more than ready. Selina had wandered over early that morning, pretending to be passing but actually hoping to be invited in, which she was, and found Poll, unable to help herself, making up a large batch of fresh salty ciabatta, and a dark round campagnarde loaf. And thirty-two buns. And a Swiss roll.