by Jenny Colgan
Flora stiffened awkwardly, straightening up her long body so you could see it for the model shape it was.
‘Uh, hello, Miss Waterford.’
Polly did her best to smile.
‘Sold out already, then?’
‘Not really,’ said Flora.
‘Who’s minding the old bakery?’
Flora shrugged. ‘Malc says it’s more profitable to… uh… rashunalise,’ she said, going pink.
‘Really,’ said Polly. It gave her absolutely no satisfaction at all to see the business being run into the ground, and she didn’t feel in the least bit guilty either. You gave people rubbish or a good alternative; they’d hopefully go for the good alternative and it was nothing to be ashamed of.
‘So is he around?’ she asked, feeling her voice getting tight in her throat. ‘I need a word with him.’
For a moment she hoped he might not be there, then she remembered seeing that loathsome BMW in the car park. Anyway, putting this off wasn’t in the least bit helpful to anyone.
Flora shrugged again. ‘Reckon.’
She leant over and lowered her voice.
‘You know, I thought he was different, but he’s just the same as all the others.’
Polly bit her tongue at that as Flora disappeared into the now idle kitchen.
‘Malc! Miss Waterford’s here to see you.’
There was some muffled swearing. Flora re-emerged.
‘He says you’ll need to wait,’ she said, embarrassed. ‘Sorry.’
‘That’s fine,’ said Polly. ‘I’ve sold all my stock.’
As she stood waiting, she noticed that there was a musty, unpleasant smell in the air, a little sour. She wondered if they’d remembered to throw away her lovely yeast culture in the fridge before it took over everything. She suspected not. That would be the smell. They were in for one hell of a shock next time they opened that fridge.
Eventually, making a big show of doing up his shirt buttons, as if he’d been through in the kitchen completely naked – which he might have been; Polly would no longer put anything past him – Malcolm emerged looking impatiently at his watch.
Polly was completely enraged by this. If he had put some genuine time and effort into this place instead of wasting it on a campaign of ongoing harassment against her, then the bakery – her bakery, she couldn’t help but feel, still – would still be a bustling, happy going concern, full of customers and staff and children and puffins, rather than this yeasty morgue.
‘Help you?’ he asked sourly.
‘Yes,’ said Polly. ‘I’m here to tell you that your little campaign stops now. NOW.’
‘What campaign?’
‘The shouting, the bullying and the you-know-what,’ said Polly, her voice trembling. ‘Have you heard of hate speech? Apparently the police take it very seriously these days.’
‘Eh?’ said Malcolm.
‘You heard,’ said Polly. ‘Not to mention destruction of property – my property. Not to mention defacement and graffiti and general YOU BEING DISGUSTING.’
She couldn’t help it, she was shouting.
‘Now you wait a minute,’ shouted Malcolm straight back, going brick red in the face. ‘It’s a free country last time I looked and I can do whatever the hell I damn well please without asking you, you bird lover. And this is NOT your property, you fantasist, we’ve told you a million times.’
‘Well you stay away from what’s mine!’ said Polly. ‘And if you lay a finger on her…’
‘Her?’ sneered Malcolm. ‘Who the hell do you mean? Flora likes it, don’t you, darling?’
‘Um,’ said Flora, staring at the floor.
‘Not her. My van! Nan the Van!’ shouted Polly at the top of her lungs. ‘Stay away from her!’
‘What about your blooming van?’
‘Stay away from it!’
‘Come on, love, that’s just friendly banter!’
‘It fricking isn’t!’
There was a clang as the door opened and in walked a very sleepy-looking Selina. She smelled of booze and she had heavy bags under her eyes.
‘Sorry,’ she said, ‘but could you stop making all that ruddy noise? Some of us are trying to sleep upstairs.’
‘Uh, Selina, it’s eleven o’clock in the morning,’ said Polly. ‘You’re just not used to hearing anyone because he’s lost all the bloody customers.’
Selina stared at Polly as if she didn’t recognise her at all. Malcolm was still shouting.
‘And it’s your bloody fault, you thieving minx!’
Polly backed out.
‘I’m not going to get into this,’ she said. ‘You come near us again… anywhere near, I’m calling the police.’
Malcolm shook his head in disbelief.
‘Good,’ he said. ‘They can cart your old rust bucket away.’
The brightness of the day made her blink as she emerged from the dingy shop. A little boy ran into her legs.
‘SORRY,’ he bawled cheerfully.
‘Hello there,’ Polly said sadly, looking down.
‘Is that the bread shop?’ he asked excitedly.
‘Well, kind of,’ she said, standing aside to let him pass.
‘Mummy said I can have cake in the cake shop! She said it’s a very famous cake shop.’
His mother came up behind her, a cheery-looking sort in a polka-dot skirt and white blouse.
‘Well it used to be,’ she said, peering at it unoptimistically. ‘I remember it from last year, it was just amazing.’
‘Things change,’ said Polly in a dull voice.
‘Don’t they.’
‘Also they have a BIRD in the cake shop!’ confided the little boy.
‘I don’t think he’s there any more,’ mumbled Polly. The boy’s face fell.
‘Don’t worry, Josephus,’ said his mother, inspecting the dusty window display with a disappointed look. ‘Shall we just have an ice cream instead?’
‘ICE CREAM! ICE CREAM!’ shouted the little boy with the strange name, delighted, and skipped off past the bakery and up the hill with his mother. Polly sighed.
Polly sat out on the other side of the harbour wall, tears running down her face. Her place, the place she had defended, that she loved; her home, where she had thought she belonged: it was as if a toad had crept in, a big poisonous wart at the middle of everything.
Selina came by and looked like she was going to walk straight past. Polly called her over.
‘Hey,’ she said. ‘I need a friendly face.’
Selina looked at her strangely. Polly thought she was being paranoid. Suddenly she felt like the world was against her. It wasn’t helpful.
‘Oh Selina,’ she said, sadly.
‘What’s up?’
Polly shook her head.
‘I can’t… Everything’s gone wrong,’ she said. ‘Everything.’
Selina sniffed and didn’t say anything.
‘Why are you so hungover?’ said Polly.
Selina bit her lip and her face stiffened.
‘Sometimes my coping mechanisms run out,’ she said. She looked at Polly. ‘Jayden came to the pub with me.’
‘He seemed all right this morning,’ said Polly.
‘He must still have been drunk, then,’ said Selina.
Polly rubbed her back.
‘It’s okay. We’ve all been there. In fact, next time, call me. I know where Andy keeps the last of Kerensa’s stock of drinkable wine.’
Selina shrugged Polly’s hand away.
‘Yeah, whatever,’ she said, and headed off.
Even though it was only the middle of the afternoon and the sun was still warm, the clouds were massing again: the same heaviness in the air, the odd yellow tinge to everything. Polly wandered back towards the town and caught up with Jayden.
‘Everyone is AWFUL today, Jayden,’ she said.
‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘I feel sick.’
He looked up at the sky.
‘That’s not a good colour,’ he said. ‘
I’m going to tell the boys not to go out.’
‘They aren’t. Archie’s got very cautious with the weather. Anyway, what’s up with you?’
‘I went drinking with Selina,’ he said.
‘Just drinking?’
‘Yes,’ said Jayden, although he flushed pink. ‘I won’t do that again.’
‘Did you both get mortalled? She’s being really weird today.’
Jayden didn’t say anything.
‘Also, if you were drinking all night with Selina, how did you get up at five a.m.?’
‘Did I?’ said Jayden. ‘Oh yes. Cor, I didn’t even remember that.’
‘Oh for goodness’ sake,’ said Polly. ‘I am going to have a word with Andy. Selling drinks that make you forget things on an island is the most lunatic thing I ever heard. You could both have wandered off the causeway and killed yourselves. Right, away with you. Go to bed. Tomorrow we work.’
Her face turned grim. ‘Malcolm has declared war. And we’re going to win it.’
Chapter Twenty-Two
Polly made up what she reasonably could for the next day, knowing on some level that she had to tell Huckle about the bullying, but not wanting to use emotional blackmail to bring him home, especially given what Clemmie was going through. She sighed. How could someone hate her that much? It was a horrible feeling.
She sat in front of the lighthouse window. The clouds really were the oddest colour, a kind of heavy mustard, with a purplish tint. It was an ugly colour, like something you’d see in the picture of an alien land, and it made Polly very uneasy. The sun did still burst through the clouds though, and the pleasure boats were all still bobbing about. The fishing boats on the other hand were safely moored to the side. Archie would get a good night’s sleep tonight.
She dozed off in the chair into an odd dream of Tarnie swimming in the water; he kept surfacing and calling for Selina, but only Polly was there to hear him. She found herself telling him, no, it’s not me you want, it’s not me, but he couldn’t hear her, just kept reaching out his long brown arms; his hair, longer now, entwined with seaweed; his blue eyes beseeching her, telling her he was confused between the deep and the world; begging her to hear him. She could not hear him. And then he SHOUTED!
She jumped up, startled, as the second gigantic clap of thunder rattled the lighthouse doors; the noise was extraordinary. It must be very close, the storm. Just as she was thinking this, a huge bolt of lightning shot across the sky in front of her eyes, illuminating the purple sea. The clouds were racing now, faster and faster; it was not yet night-time, but it was as dark as night. The waves were moving in jagged, fearsome points, this way and that, the dips between them growing deeper and deeper. Somewhere in the lighthouse there was another huge bang. She jumped in alarm – she had left one of the windows open (she always did, in case Neil came home, even if it did occasionally soak her bathroom floor) – and started downstairs, slightly anxious, with the strange clammy foreboding that comes from waking from a deep sleep and a bad dream, to close it.
As she did so, there was another bolt of lightning, an extraordinary clap of thunder, and all the lights in the lighthouse went out.
Trapped in the dark of the circular stairway, Polly swore and hung close to the wall till she could feel her way down. Sure enough, it was the downstairs bathroom window that was open. She moved over carefully, shut the window and peered out.
This side of the lighthouse looked towards the town. But now there was no town to see: all the electricity had been knocked out. Thank God the lighthouse lamp had its own separate back-up generator that kept its beam rolling around the darkened rock of Mount Polbearne.
The little cottages looked like they were huddling together, turning their eyes away from the onslaught of the storm, trying desperately to escape attention. The cracking noise in the sky was ear-splitting. From the window Polly saw the rain fling itself furiously against the rocks – then realised it was no longer rain, but great big hailstones, sweeping in and hurling themselves crazily against anything they could find.
‘Oh lord,’ said Polly out loud, suddenly frightened. She heard, somewhere, the tinkle of glass – was it upstairs? Had a particularly large hailstone hit a window somewhere? There was another tinkle, and another. Polly suddenly found herself gulping a little, fearful. She wished more than ever that someone else was here; she desperately missed Huckle’s large, comforting presence.
She found herself worrying about old Mrs Brodie and Mrs Carter up in those badly insulated cottages right at the very top of the town. Mind you, they and their families had been living through storms without electricity for generations, she supposed. It was unlikely this would bother them much; they’d probably be miles better off than she was, living ludicrously exposed like this. For a start they wouldn’t be crashing around trying to find the last remnants of those tea lights Huckle had lit for her the night he’d built the bath. She managed to find a long book of matches and light a couple of candles. It was reassuring to have some illumination, however feeble, until she caught sight of a terrifying witchy apparition appearing out of nowhere in the cloudy bathroom mirror, and screamed, the sound vanishing into the howling wind, crashing hail and another clap of thunder.
Bollocks, said Polly to herself. Bollocks bollocks bollocks. She realised she was shaking, and tried telling herself not to be so silly. It was a storm. She lived on a rocky outcrop in the middle of the sea. Storms were in essence what happened.
She was suddenly so grateful for Archie’s caution and wisdom. If the fleet had been out on the waves tonight, it would have been unbearable for everyone. Thank God they were all safe.
Sleep, though – as the lighthouse creaked, the tower pushing this way and that in the wind – would surely be impossible.
Some nights Polly could sleep through a storm if she was tired enough; she would feel warm and cosy in her bed, safe under the blankets. But tonight was nothing like that at all. This was torn from a different world, and she felt for her funny old home, worrying about the harbour wall and the old church at the top of the island losing chunks here and there, falling further into disrepair. It was a struggle to persuade the local council to come and empty the bins, never mind invest in a crumbling infrastructure that was falling into the sea slowly but surely, and the storm would only make things worse.
She took a candle and carefully inched her way up the stairs to the sitting room, where she could see more from the window and had less chance of being literally scared by her own reflection. Even so, her shadow advancing up the tall stairwell walls was like something from a children’s story.
‘That’s it,’ she grumbled. ‘I am definitely getting a dog.’
Once at the sitting room window, up high, she picked up her mobile, but of course there was nothing, and the ancient old landline phone that had been left behind when they moved in, with its big old buttons, wasn’t working either.
Had she not been so frightened, the sight from the windows would have been oddly thrilling. Under the ripping sky, there were tiny pinpoints of light here and there, scattered about on the island: candles in windows; one or two bobbing up against the wind, obviously people going to check on their neighbours; here and there a brighter torch. It was, bar the sweep of the lighthouse every twenty seconds, very much how it must have been a hundred years ago, thought Polly. Two hundred. More.
She gazed out, the noise still crashing in her ears even though the sitting room windows were closed, hypnotised, entranced by the sense of looking back into a dark world where the only light was fire, where you were indeed an island, reliant on everyone around you to get by: not the council, not the government, not ASOS or the Looe supermarket. That this was all there was, all of them in it together.
She glanced at the boats in the harbour; although kept apart by tyres to stop them bumping into each other too aggressively, they were still jostling. The waves were shooting high above the harbour walls. She remembered how some nights the water would hit the windows of the fl
at. This was definitely one of those nights: the tide was as high as any she could remember. It was beyond wild: not a night to be out in, not at all.
She stared at the tiny candlelit village: occasionally a shadow passing here and there; a dark figure, moving quickly. Nobody was asleep tonight. She thought of all the people of Polbearne past, their names repeated so often in the graveyard above the town: the Brodies, the Tarnsforths, the Manses: all the lives – hard, dangerous lives, when things were tougher than they were now – that had gone on here, in unheated homes, dependent on a good wind and a good catch, or worse, bounty washed up from the sea.