Before and After

by Lockington, Laura

The giant’s thumb was a huge jutting piece of granite rock which stood about half a mile out to sea in high tide, that only had sea birds (the charmingly locally named shags) wheeling around it, and the swim out there and back could be treacherous. Of course, all the locals knew the tides, but even so… I was sure that one day someone wouldn’t come back. How they even got into that icy crashing sea was a mystery to me, as well. Perhaps everybody else had a different sort of body thermostat than me? As I was sure that my heart would cease if I even went ankle deep in the surf, let alone dunked my whole body in. Richard assured me that after three pints of heavy, you didn’t really feel anything much, but I wasn’t convinced.

  Nancy came into the kitchen, her long silver hair in a plait draped over one shoulder wearing her heavy satin kimono that I always coveted. It was a thing of extraordinary beauty. Heavy and brilliantly coloured with jewel like flowers, it made her look like an artist’s model from Montmartre.

  She paused by the table, where I was pushing slices of lemon into the wild salmon, ready to poach it, and shuddered.

  “Oh, Fin… It’s too much to look at, after last night! I think some toast for me will do the ticket, how about you?”

  I smugly replied that I’d had mine, and went into the larder to fetch the dill that I was going to use with the salmon.

  “It’s so unfair, you know, hangovers get worse when you’re older, it’s something to do with the liquid surrounding the brain shrinking. Just when you’ve reached the age when the benefits of booze do some good, you’re prevented from taking advantage of it! Bloody unjust, that’s what I say,” Nancy complained, whilst making toast and tea.

  I smiled sympathetically at her and pushed the tin of Andrews liver Salts towards her. She gave another shudder, and shook her head.

  “No, no thanks darling. I’m going back to bed, just think how poor Angelique used to feel, they say that absinthe was the worse hangover possible, although I’ve never had any. Perhaps we should try some one day, just to find out?”

  It was my turn to shudder.

  “Perhaps you’re right, anyway, I’m back to my bed of pain. See you later,” she called out to me, balancing a tray of toast, butter, marmalade and tea in her hands.

  I watched her stately progress up the hall, and wondered if I too could go back to bed. Probably not. Baxter needed a walk, the salmon needed poaching and the damn roast onions wouldn’t come up with a recipe by themselves. I sighed, this was a horrible job sometimes. I didn’t want to think about food at all. Ever again, in fact, but it simply had to be done.

  Nelson shuffled around a bit and piped up with “Bloody TV chefs, bloody TV chefs!”

  “Shut up Nelson!” I snapped at him.

  He regarded me stonily for a moment and then parroted it back to me, “Shut up Nelson, shut up Nelson!”

  I knew when I was beaten, and pointedly ignoring the bird, called to Baxter to go for a walk. Some fresh air was called for.

  I took Baxter eastwards, towards the woods which covered the gentle hill on the side of Penmorah. The woods had been my delight when I was a child, much more so than the beach, where I always felt that the sea was just waiting for a chance to reclaim the land, and I’d felt duty bound to keep a watchful eye on it. The woods, on the other hand, were innocent of such treachery. Still, and almost padded with velvet, so soft was the silence in there. All of the ancient mossy trees had a bend in them where they leant away from the sea wind, from above they must look like a field of green wheat, bending in the breeze.

  A jay flashed in front of me, and Baxter gamely gave chase, letting out excited yelps. He then remembered his dignity, and reverted back to a purposeful trot, tail held high and ears pricked up ready for any danger that may befall us. I say us, because it was quite comforting, but I suspect that if a mad axe murderer leapt out from behind an oak tree, Baxter would most certainly have left me to it.

  My cousin, Beatrice and I used to play for hours here, but she was a domesticated creature even in the dark Celtic woods, and made houses out of twigs and dead branches. Complete with make believe doors and windows and would then invite me in to take tea. I’d always felt resentful of this, they were my woods, after all, I certainly didn’t need an invitation to cross the threshold. I smiled at the memory of Beatrice’s cross little face, when I refused blankly to enter her house. Things hadn’t changed that much between us now, I reflected. When Bea did make the trip over from Canada to see Nancy, she still had the ability to get my back up. Treating Penmorah as her make believe house.

  Bea was a sturdy, sensible creature, two years older than me, who did a job in a bank in Ontario that neither Nancy or I understood, although we’d had it explained to us many, many times. It was hard to remember that Bea was Nancy’s daughter, she had none of her mother’s charm, or vagueness, but was a hard headed business woman, married to a sensible engineer, with two sturdy sensible sons.

  One of the main jealousies I had with Bea, was that she had been born in Paris, which had seemed to me as a child the height of sophistication and somehow deeply unfair. Paris … how glamorous. Why hadn’t I been?

  Nancy had invited my mother out to join her there for a sisterly long holiday when my father was out in Australia working on a non-existent gold mine (one of his many failed businesses.) Dorothea had stayed for nearly a year, and had been present at Bea’s birth.

  Nancy was a strangely unmaternal grandmother, who occasionally would guiltily forget her grandsons names, or muddle them up. I never knew if she did this on purpose to unsettle Bea, or if she genuinely forgot. She hardly ever spoke of them to me, but again, that could be her natural sense of delicacy, supposing that I felt I might have missed the boat.

  It couldn’t have been further from the truth.

  Having sensible sturdy sons had never really appealed, besides, I had trouble looking after myself, two pets, my aunt and a very demanding house, let alone a squalling baby. Although, of course, I do see that if you had a husband things might change a bit on that front.

  I sat down in a pool of pale sunshine and leant against the lichen covered trunk of an oak tree. Tightly curled fronds of ferns were sprouting all around me, I let my fingers stroke the sun warmed earth and closed my eyes to feel the shallow heat of the sun on my face.

  Of course, a husband would be nice. But where on earth I would find one was beyond me. I‘d given up looking really. Port Charles wasn’t very big on eligible bachelors, yes, Jace was an exceptionally fit young man, but husband material? I think not. I’d conducted an affair with a vet down Bodmin way a couple of years ago. It had fizzled out in the way that those things do, when there’s not really enough affection to keep them going. Patrick, the vet, was nice enough, but… Sometimes, when I was lonely I thought about calling him, but knew that I never would. Nancy urged me to, but then, as I reasonably pointed out to her, she wasn’t the one who was going to have to sit listening to him drone on about colic in horses or something equally unattractive.

  The gentle bird song was interrupted by Baxter barking his head off. Oh god, I hope he hadn’t got a rabbit. I jumped up and ran to see what all the fuss was about. He was barking furiously, and scrabbling at a hole he’d found in a steep bank at the side of the path. I pushed him away, and bent down to investigate. Penmorah woods had badgers, and this looked like a set to me. I stroked Baxter’s white coat and led him away.

  “You’d come off worse, in a fight with them, Baxter. I’d leave well enough alone, if I were you,” I cautioned him.

  He followed me with a regretful glance at the bank, obviously marking it down on a mental map for when he was off on one of his solitary romps.

  I clipped his lead on, and headed towards the village. In the distance I could see the mysterious remains of the long abandoned tin mine. It was now smothered in ivy, with briars and nettles crowding around it. There had been some talk about of restoring it, in the hope it would attract tourists, but the project had been long forgotten.

  We strode out down the la
ne and soon came to the bakers, where I tethered Baxter outside, winding his lead around the lamp post. Doris was serving a customer and in the middle of a story about the beach picnic, and what she was going to bring, so I idled in the shop, waiting for her to finish. It was no hardship, of course, because the wonderful yeasty smell of baking was heavenly.

  There was another smell as well, deep, redolent and almost antiseptic. Saffron, of course. No right minded Cornish bakers would smell of anything else. Us Cornish have conducted a love affair with the fiendishly expensive saffron for centuries. We’ve used it as cough remedies, love potions and of course we bake with it. Buns and cakes. And Doris’s were the best. I breathed deeply, and craning my head round to the back of the shop, I saw her husband, Isaac, pulling out a new batch of buns from the enormous oven.

  I bought a couple to eat on the way home, and a cake for Nancy and me to eat this afternoon.

  “I’ll put ‘em on the account,” Doris said, when I confessed to coming out without any money in my pocket. “Right good night at The Ram, weren’t it? Reckons we’m all getting’ ready for the picnic”

  “It certainly feels like it,” I said, dryly.

  She laughed, “Nancy puts us all to shame, don’t she? Can’t believe she’s pushing seventy!”

  I thanked her for the buns, and went out to retrieve Baxter. We wandered down to the tiny port, and sat on the wall. I saw that a new shop had finally opened in what had been an ironmongers. This was now called, originally enough, Cornish Treasures. I walked over and peered in the window and saw the usual tat of shells, rocks, and sponges. They even had ‘Mermaid Eggs’ which should be placed in water, left for a hundred years and would guarantee the owner luck, wealth and happiness, all for the paltry sum of £25.99. Good grief.

  “Good grief,” I heard a man’s voice say beside me, “Proper shockin’ that is.”

  I turned to see Jace lounging elegantly against the shop window. He bent down to stroke Baxter, and I grinned at him.

  We sat down companionably back on the port wall and I handed him a saffron bun. We chewed on the fruity sweet dough that was sticky in the middle in a friendly silence, letting Baxter catch the crumbs. Jace cocked his head at the new shop, and said in disgust, “Bound to make money, too.”

  I nodded in agreement. It was Catch 22, really. Port Charles needed the tourists, the tourists it seemed needed the tat. I saw out of the corner of my eye two girls, tourists or emmets, as they are known in this part of the world, saunter down the cobbled road that leads around the port. They eyed Jace up, and did the usual girly thing of smoothing their hair and adjusting their clothes. I glanced at Jace, but for once he was oblivious to it.

  In fact, when I looked closely at him, he seemed quite morose.

  “Anything wrong, Jace?” I said, privately thinking that there must be something troubling him for him to ignore such a golden opportunity as two fresh faced emmets.

  “It’s me mum,” he said, gazing out over the sea.

  His mother, the enchantingly named Pritti was a small, determined woman from an intriguing background of Indian, Srilankan, Irish, and Pakistani roots, who ran the family with ruthless efficiency. It can’t have been easy being the only Asian family to have settled in Port Charles, but she had managed it. Jace had been born here, along with his sisters who helped out in the shop. His father, Rasheed, had died many years ago. He had been a charmer, a dandy and a strutting peacock of a man. He wore long Indian silk shirts and carried an ebony cane with a silver top. From what I had pieced together he had squandered all his money, and left Pritti and his family penniless when he died.

  Pritti grew fields full of coriander and fenugreek, which Jace sold along side all his other vegetables. The Rampersauds were a good looking, exotic bunch and seemed to have integrated into the close Cornish community well, or so I had always thought.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “She only wants me to get married, that’s all, to a girl from back home.” Jace said despondently.

  Oh, dear. I could quite see how that would cramp they style of the local Romeo.

  “Have you met her?” I said.

  “Nah, she’s some sorta cousin or somethin’.” He turned to me and giving the full force of his persuasive charm, said, “Look, Fin, when you see me mum, about the onions an’ all, could you have a word? You know, tell her that it’s not on, you know, that sorta thing isn’t done any more and –“

  “Whoa, there tiger. I don’t think I can really do that, can I?” I said uncomfortably, with thoughts of arranged marriages jumping around my head, with another surprising fleeting thought that I wished someone would arrange a match for me. After all, weren’t arranged marriages now thought to be quite a good thing? I don’t mean forced marriages, but properly arranged. I mean, I’m sure if you are a young girl it must be terrifying, but all the statistics proved that a lot of couples were very happy, with the families knowing what was best for their children. Marrying anyone was a huge risk anyway, perhaps this way was one that actually worked? Then again, I was probably justifying it to wriggle out of talking to Pritti.

  Jace heaved a sigh, and looked despairingly at me.

  “I’ll do my best, but I’m not promising anything, OK? Besides, Nancy and Pritti are partners in crime, aren’t they? It’d be better off coming from her,” I said, knowing that I would probably make a mess of it and unwittingly insult Pritti.

  Jace thanked me, and said sloped off, looking like a panther on the prowl.

  I watched him walk away, thinking not for the first time what a stunner he was. The two young emmets certainly thought so as they positively leered at him as he sauntered past them. I could tell he was feeling a little better, as he casually gave them a slow smile. They both giggled and nudged each other with colt like elbows.

  It was tempting to sit in the pale sun and watch the world go by, Port Charles was hardly St Mark’s Square, and therefore not the drawing room of Europe, but it had its charms nevertheless.

  I reluctantly stood up, and giving Baxter a gentle tug, headed for home.

  Nancy was still in bed when I finally arrived back, having been distracted for a good three quarters of an hour by Baxter, who had given me the slip and gone back to investigate the badgers set. I settled myself for an afternoons work in the kitchen, poaching the salmon, making the marinade for the prawns for the picnic and playing around with ideas for the onions.

  Nelson gave his customary pre-telephone ring screech, and I answered the damn thing, wiping my fishy hands on a tea towel.

  “Fin, darling, what’s the weather like?”

  “Hello Harry,” I said, looking out the window. “Hmm, well, I’ve got a bit of a hangover, it’s bracingly breezy and sunny, so I think 12 million Jewish mums can’t be wrong, it’s simply got to be chicken noodle, hasn’t it?”

  “You’re getting very traditional, aren’t you?” Harry teased.

  “That’s as maybe, “I said sternly, “Anyway, I’m in the middle of skinning a salmon, what do you want?”

  “Change of plan, Oliver has a break in his shooting schedule, and wants to come tomorrow and-”

  I interrupted him immediately,” Absolutely impossible, I’m afraid. It’s the beach picnic and-”

  “I know, I know, but Fin, this is very important,” Harry’s voice held a hint of clamp jawed desperation in it, and I guessed that Oliver bloody Dean was in his office.

  “He’s there, isn’t he?” I said accusingly.

  “Umm, yes,” Harry said in a bright voice, trying to sound up beat. “I’m pretty sure that I can get away too, but not for a few days, so how does that sound?”

  “It sounds like hell, if you want to know the truth, and I hate being railroaded, but I see that I am beaten,” I said tartly.

  Harry gave a hearty fake laugh, and I hoped to god that I wasn’t on speaker phone. “I’ll tell Oliver to call you when he gets to the station, shall I? And you can pick him up.”

  “Why isn’t he driving dow
n?” I asked, knowing that there was a fair chance of him getting lost if he did.

  “I don’t know why, would you like to ask him?” Harry said sweetly.

  “No! Oh, OK, I’ll meet him at the station, but it had better be in the morning because I shall be on the beach in the afternoon and-”

  “Yes, yes, I understand. I’ll call you later Fin. Bye darling!”

  Bloody hell. I skinned and sliced a cucumber with quick vicious strokes, slapping them onto the cold salmon, and gluing them in place with mayonnaise.

  Nancy wandered in to the kitchen and switched on the kettle. She glanced down at the fish and said, “Oh how lovely, very ‘70’s isn’t it? Reminds me of Abigail’s Party and Black Forest Gateau, of course Port Charles won’t see it like that at all Fin, I do think you’re clever darling… would you like some tea?”

  “No thanks, I’m going to make up the bed in the Yellow Room.” I said shortly.

  “Oh dear, does that mean that the bloody TV chef is arriving earlier than expected?” Nancy said sympathetically, then looked nervously at Nelson, who for once hadn’t picked up on it. “Whoops, we’d better be careful, hadn’t we?”

  “It won’t make any difference, you could say ‘bluebells are divine’ ten thousand times, and say ‘burn the priests’ once, and you know which one he’d pick up,” I said bitterly.

  Nancy laughed, and squeezed my arm. She whooshed some boiling water around the battered silver teapot that we used in the kitchen and serenely set out her tea things. I motioned to the saffron cake that I had bought earlier and she made a delighted face of appreciation.

  “Oliver Dean might well be a very nice person and we might well like him, and we might, just might all get on very well and have a marvellous time, and he might have a wonderful idea for the onions and-”

  “And pigs might fly,” I added, smiling at her as I swished out of the room to make the bloody bed.