The Briny Café

by Susan Duncan

  The room flickers and glitters in light thrown by two tall candles. An oval table is draped in a stark white linen cloth.

  “Take your seat, please,” Marcus says, pointing at their places.

  Sam glances at the table setting and battles to mask the fact that up against a toff like Marcus, with his silver and fancy linen, he feels more than a bit unpolished. But he knows at the precise moment that Marcus pours him a glass of dry white wine – to bring out the delicate flavour of the fish – that he is not just unpolished but from a completely different league. There weren’t any crystal glasses or bone-handled knives in the roughly cobbled boatshed where he was raised. His mum, a demon for value for money, bought up big when peanut butter and Vegemite was sold in drinking glasses instead of screw-top jars until she amassed a solid collection. She scavenged the family cutlery from Vinnies. Once or twice, Sam remembers, the knives and forks matched. Their plates were odds and ends, every colour under the sun. Back then, he thought it looked festive. Clothes were secondhand, too. What was the point, his mum said, of running wild in new shorts when they’d get ripped by the bush? Nearly all the neighbours were doing it just as hard, so none of the kids had any idea they were poor until they went to the city for a doctor’s appointment. Even then, the lush extravagance on display was so irrelevant to Cook’s Basin life that they couldn’t see the point of it all.

  Marcus lifts a heavy china dome from a gilt-edged serving plate and draws his catch of the day towards him. He runs a sharp knife down the fish’s spine, carefully peels away a crisped skin and expertly eases hunks of snow-white flesh from the bone. He serves it slightly off-centre on almost transparent white plates, tumbling roasted red and green capsicum and quartered potatoes alongside. A salad of mixed baby lettuce leaves, highlighted with saffron-yellow mustard flowers, waits on an austere sideboard.

  “You’re a real showman, mate. One trick a minute.” Sam holds out his plate, indicating with a jiggle and a nod towards the fish that a larger portion would be appreciated.

  The chef obliges. “A man with a healthy appetite. Good.”

  But Kate kicks him under the table and he nearly drops the plate. He recovers and slurps a large slug of wine, leaning back in his chair until he balances on two fragile, antique legs. He opens his mouth to speak. Kate cuts him off.

  “Sit up, Sam!” she snaps. “You’ll break the chair and your neck.”

  He is so shocked he does as he’s told. He withdraws his linen napkin from a silver ring engraved with initials. “A family heirloom, is it?” he asks, laying it in his lap with a triangular fold that he hopes finds favour with the assembled gathering.

  “Yes. My parents brought it with them from Germany. It has been in a tea-chest for many years.” Marcus swirls his wine, sniffs and sips. Satisfied, he tucks his own napkin into his shirt collar and nods that they should all begin eating.

  “Too good to use, huh?” Sam says.

  “My father did not have the heart to use it after my mother died. And on the farm, well, it was rough, you know. I was too young to appreciate finer things.”

  Sam’s face is hot with embarrassment. “Sorry to hear that, mate. Must’ve been hard.”

  Kate decides to come to his rescue. “What kind of a farmer?”

  “The struggling kind. But of course, that is all there is in Australia. My father, accustomed to rich German land, saw only the size of the farm when he bought it. I remember only the cold. Windows white with frost. My mother coughing.”

  Sam shakes his head with sympathy, trying to make amends.

  “Every winter,” Marcus continues, “I helped my mother stuff old towels under the doors to stop the wind. Made her cups of hot tea. She always sat so close to the fire in the kitchen stove. But she was never warm. Not even in summer. The cold, it was in her bones, you see.”

  The room is silent except for the occasional clink of cutlery on china. Ettie gazes at the chef.

  Encouraged, he continues. “My father, he told me that she started to catch her breath. It was a year after I was born. Eventually, the effort to breathe wore her out.”

  Ettie reaches out to take his hand. “How old were you?” she asks.

  “I was nine.”

  “Oh you poor, poor boy,” she says, as though he’s now standing before her in his school shorts, rat-tailed shirt and scuffed leather lace-ups.

  Sam is the first to break a long, charged silence. “Best fish I’ve ever tasted, mate. Cooked to perfection. You’re nearly up there with Ettie.”

  “How’s Jimmy doing?” Kate asks Sam, to give the chef time to pull himself together.

  “Good as gold. And mate, you wouldn’t believe it, but his room’s as clean and tidy as an operating theatre.”

  “Doesn’t his mother feel kind of weird, knowing her son’s living with you?”

  “Nah. She’s thrilled to think someone’s keeping an eye on him.”

  Kate looks at him in amazement. “That’s her job, surely?”

  “Bit hard to manage when you’re in the clink.”

  “She’s in jail? His mother’s a criminal?” Kate puts down her knife and fork, turns her shocked gaze on Sam.

  “Wouldn’t put it quite like that. A case of mistaken identities. All of them registered for the dole.”

  “Ah. Fraud.” She returns to her plate. Spears a piece of potato.

  “You journos have a nasty habit of leaping to conclusions before all the facts are assembled. She did it to find the money to send Jimmy to a special school.”

  Kate snaps back: “Doesn’t make it right.”

  “No. Just desperate, I s’pose.” He nods towards the wine, asking Kate to pass the bottle. Knows he’s hit a nerve when she ignores him.

  After a dessert that Marcus describes as an old-fashioned lemon pudding to which he’s added fresh blueberries and lemon butter, Sam apologises for having to skip coffee and make an early dash from a splendid evening, but he has a dawn cargo pick-up. Kate says she is exhausted and, if Marcus doesn’t mind, she too will take her leave.

  Ettie, relaxed and sleepy, volunteers to help clean up. Marcus suggests she slips off her shoes, gets comfortable on the sofa and he’ll bring her a very decent cognac instead.

  “Lovely,” she murmurs.

  “Jeez,” Sam blurts when he and Kate are out of earshot. “What a night. Next time I’ll dig out me Sunday best.”

  “Stop it. It was wonderful. Beautiful food. Excellent wine.”

  “I reckon he’s got the hots for Ettie. What d’you think?”

  Kate looks at him like he needs a lobotomy. “Very observant of you, Sam.” They reach the end of the jetty. “Haven’t you always said that Ettie is the answer to every man’s dreams?” She smacks her forehead with the palm of her hand. “Oh God, Sam. You sound like you’re jealous. Well, what did you expect? That she would wait until you were ready to throw down your anchor?”

  “Throw-down-my-an-chor?” He repeats the words, syllable by syllable, like he can’t believe what he’s heard. “Even for a journo that’s a shocker line.” He swallows a belly laugh so he doesn’t wake the good Kingfish Bay residents out of their peaceful sleep, shakes his head one last time and leaps into his dinghy. Chugs off without saying goodnight.

  His piddly fifteen-horsepower motor sounds tinnier than a spoon banging inside an empty can. Kate, he thinks, has the insight of a mosquito. Throw down his anchor? Jeez. If there’s a wrong way to read a situation she goes for it like a cat after a rat. And for a second there, he’d thought she was showing signs of settling into Cook’s Basin like a native. He’d even been tempted, on a mysterious impulse he couldn’t quite pin down, to invite her on a stroll to a lush green wonderland of rainforest lying under a lazy little waterfall hidden high on the escarpment. He’d found the tiny slice of paradise as a kid and knew, even then, to keep it a secret for its own sake. Magic, it was. Moss three inches thick on boulders tumbling like an emerald ocean swell. A canopy of rippling cabbage palms singing a whispery chorus. Thi
ck, damp air ballooning with fecundity, while shafts of lemon light landed softly on chocolate earth. And the mist. Wisps of it rising like the spirits of ancient generations. Damned poetic, the land and water.

  But throw-down-his-anchor? Nah, he decides. He’ll give showing her that beauty spot a miss. She’ll see the details plain enough, but with the cold, disengaged and judgemental eye she gets when she thinks you’re trying to put one over on her. Maybe suspicion is all part of a journo’s job. If it is, it sure as hell must take the spontaneity out of life.

  He gazes up at the star-splattered sky – the Pointers, the Southern Cross, the Saucepan, the Milky Way. The certainties of his physical world. So what if he doesn’t rate a rave review in a restaurant guide, or an interview in a newspaper? He’s a bloke who never shirks the hard yards. And that has to stand for something.

  He thinks of Marcus. Dig deep enough and you’ll find everyone has a cross to bear. He’s a good man. Perfect for Ettie. A stayer, if he’s read all the signs right. With a bit of luck, they’ll make a go of it.

  On the spur of the moment, he makes up his mind he’ll return the chef’s hospitality with a Cook’s Basin-style get-together. Prawns on ice in tin buckets on the pontoon, their shells thrown straight back to the sea. Freshly caught fish, pan-fried in butter over a fire in a washing machine drum at the water’s edge. Served on enamel plates with a waxy spud cooked in hot coals. Some quartered lemons for zing and not a single fancy sauce in sight. Bread maybe, to mop up the juices in the frying pan. A few frigidly cold ales to wash it all down. Kings used to live like that.

  Jimmy better be asleep in bed, he thinks as he heads home. Kids should come with a warning attached. Proceed at your own risk. Who knew one boy could manage twenty Weet-Bix at a go?

  Halfway there, Sam nears the Weasel’s pontoon. Feeling reckless and more than slightly drunk, he decides to stop off and perform a little maritime surgery. Despite the warnings, the Weasel is showing no signs of curbing his activities.

  No time like the present to crank up the pressure, Sam thinks. While he searches in the bottom of his tinny for tools, a boat surfs in on a massive bow wave and almost crumples his boat.

  “Need a hand, mate?” asks a knockabout Islander with a legendary thirst. He holds a stubby like he was born with one attached to his hand. Even in the dark, his face glows ruddily.

  “Got a shifter on you, mate?”

  Not caring that it’s too early in the night for criminal deeds, they brazenly loosen a heap of new nuts and bolts. The Islander pockets them, knowing they’ll come in handy one day. There is no sign of life from the house. They give the pontoon a shove then the Islander raises his beer in a toast and roars off, leaving Sam to tow it to a bank of mangroves. He ties it securely so there’s no possibility a boat will bang into it in the dark. He heads home, giving the night sky a last look of appreciation.

  A moment before the Weasel’s house disappears from sight, he checks if any lights have come on. It’s blacker than tar. All good.

  Ettie reclines in softness with a blood temperature cognac held in the bowl of her hand. Fumes rise in dizzying spirals, tickling her nose, heightening her senses. She hears Marcus’s footfalls as he approaches and swings her feet to the floor. He lowers himself beside her, placing his liqueur on a small side table.

  “No, no,” she says, resisting his attempt to lift her feet back to the sofa, afraid that he will find them unattractive.

  “Chefs’ hoofs wear scars like a map of their career,” he says. And he begins to rub her battle-worn toes. Ettie smiles inwardly. If anyone had told her that she’d be seduced by a simple foot massage, she would have laughed out loud. If only all men realised how utterly erotic kindness could be. If he asks her to sleep with him, she thinks she will say yes. At fifty-five, there’s no point in wasting time. Coyness, anyway, can be mistaken for lack of interest. She’d hate to risk him thinking that.

  In a while, he leads her by the hand to a bedroom that is mostly white. There are books stacked in mountains and, to Ettie’s immense relief, no sign of a woman anywhere. Only feathery pillows and cool linen sheets that snap under the weight of their naked bodies.

  “Your skin is like butter,” he says, his hand stroking her thighs.

  She turns towards him, and without any rush they find ways to move together that allow each their small vanities and the frailties of their years.

  Ettie is woken by the smell of baking when the sun is high enough for her to realise morning is well underway. She wraps herself in a sheet and stumbles into the kitchen, rubbing sleep from her eyes. Marcus greets her with a strong coffee, a plate of warm, sweet pastries and a kiss that makes her knees buckle.

  “Kate has already opened the café,” he tells her. “I baked and delivered enough pastries for the breakfast rush. I have never needed much sleep. I hope that is acceptable to you.”

  “I am never, ever, going to let you out of my sight,” she says. To her horror, she bursts into tears and blubs into his wide chest like a baby. He licks the tears off her face, takes her hand and leads her back to bed.

  Two hours later, Ettie wanders along the ramp from the café pontoon wearing last night’s dress, trailing a long red scarf, her face flushed and dreamy. Instead of the dull ache of aging (which she is so accustomed to she barely notices any more), she feels lush, ripe. Immortal. Everything around her suddenly looks deeply erotic, when yesterday it was just seagrass, oysters, the lapping sea.

  “Slept in,” she says sheepishly. She looks down at her bare feet. “Sorry.”

  Kate smiles. “Let’s have a cuppa.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  The Weasel flies into a spitting rage when he finds his pontoon missing. He paces up and down his jetty, ranting, screaming, cursing. He is heard so clearly at the top of the Island that mums slam shut their windows to prevent their young children picking up any new and inappropriate words.

  Passing by on the barge, Sam casually drops in to inform him that he’s seen a pontoon washed up on a beach in a forest of mangroves east of Wineglass Bay.

  “Stuck good and proper,” he says, shaking his head, like it is a fairdinkum tragedy. “Must’ve rammed in there on a high tide. You might want me to get rid of it for you before you cop a littering fine. Prefer payment in cash, if you don’t mind.”

  The Weasel throws a punch.

  “Mate,” Sam says, blocking the move and twisting the Weasel’s arm behind his back, “if you wanted someone else to tow it away, all you had to do was say so.” He lets go, turns on his heels, strides along the jetty and leaps onto the Mary Kay which he’d left idling. “Full throttle. We’re outta here.” The barge powers away. He orders the mutt to the bow, tells Jimmy to stay in the cabin.

  The Weasel takes a minute to react, then he roars down the jetty like a feral pig.

  Sam checks the distance between them. Eight feet and growing. Unless he’s an Olympic long jumper (doubtful given his stumpy legs and egg-shaped gut) the Weasel is all bluff.

  Sam relishes the feel of the smooth timber under his hands as he swings the helm and points the duckbill nose of the Mary Kay into the glittering open sea. A top day and it’s only just begun.

  Fast Freddy skips along the jetty, dodging through the early morning white-collar crowd and a few rheumy-eyed, Coke-clutching chippies still waiting to be ferried to their offshore jobs. Ettie sees him and waves from the door of The Briny, miming drinking a cup of coffee. He nods.

  With summer hanging back like it is waiting for a deckle-edged invitation, Ettie reckons Freddy has a couple of merciful weeks left before the full-on party palaver begins. There are seasonal signs on the way, though. Pollen on the wind. Bleached skies. The racket of magpies with squawking babies. It won’t be long, she thinks, before Freddy’s chirp gets worn out by recalcitrant drunks on nights when the heat refuses to fade and the bays are furnace-hot along with everyone’s tempers. On an impulse, she yanks down the plastic ribbons hanging from the doorway.

  Fast Freddy po
ps up like an apparition on the other side. “Glad to see the last of them. Risked permanent blindness every time I walked in.”

  “Useless things,” she says, crumpling them up and tossing them in the bin. “Meant to keep out the flies – except nobody told the bloody flies that. Coming off work, then?”

  “One more pick-up and then I’m heading home. Just had a call – it’s a doozy. A bloke spewing his guts on a yacht on the western shore of Cat Island needs rescuing. He’s offered two hundred bucks if I deliver him from purgatory. A gift. And a good deed if I can find the boat. All I need is a double-shot espresso to carry me over the finish line.”

  “Coming right up.”

  “You’re looking good, Ettie,” Freddy says, sensing a difference but unwilling to speculate what’s caused it. Although like everyone else he’s heard the rumour of a new romance in Ettie’s life.

  “We’re nearly there with the café, Freddy. Kate and I have got the scars to prove it.” She holds up red and chapped hands, the fingernails ripped and ragged. Kate stands next to her, hands also raised for inspection.

  “Honest work never hurt a soul, ladies. Some say it nourishes it.”

  Five minutes after Freddy departs, the two Misses Skettle descend on the café in a head-spinning wave of Yardley’s April Violets talcum powder. Their summer dresses are held tightly at the waist by wide red patent-leather belts. They step through the doorway and automatically reach up sparrow hands to tweak their lilac hair into place. They pause, mid-stream, puzzled.

  “Ah,” one says, approvingly, when they note the missing strips over the doorway. “Another of Bertie’s health hazards hits the dust.”

  “Aside from his coffee, of course,” says the other. “Good work!”