Summer at Blue Sands Cove

by Chris Ward

  ‘Do we know each other?’ she asked, just in case she was wrong.

  He smiled. ‘Paul Davis. We were in the same class at school? We sat next to each other in Mrs. Minke’s biology class in the fourth year. Don’t you remember?’

  Grace gave a slow nod. Mrs. Minke had been a school terror. You had to sit in alphabetical order, and speaking between pupils unless given specific instruction to do so was forbidden. You had to pronounce her name with a long I sound to make it into “Meenke” or risk drawing her terrifying wrath. Occasionally a new kid would pronounce it with a hard I. They never did it twice.

  In Mrs. Minke’s class you were expected to sit straight and face the front. Even turning towards other kids could have been seen as a sign of delinquency, so it wasn’t a surprise Grace had rarely spoken to Paul, even across an entire school year. Talking had been strictly prohibited.

  ‘I do remember you, but not very well, I’m afraid. How are you doing?’

  Paul shrugged. ‘Good. I work here full time, but it’s the only place in Blue Sands which doesn’t get crowded with visitors, so it’s quiet.’ He handed a card across the table. ‘Here you are. Use your I.D. number to log in, and the password is Blue123.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  The computers were a lot older than Grace had hoped, and she grabbed a couple of magazines to flick through while waiting for screens to load. As soon as she could, however, she began searching for bloggers and local websites, emailing all of them with her request.

  It was a simple one: to visit the Blue Sands Café for themselves, and then (hopefully) write something nice about it.

  She was still hard at work when Paul came over. ‘Excuse me, Grace?’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘It’s ten past six. I need to close up.’

  Grace nearly jumped out of her seat. She had been emailing bloggers for the last four hours, and still had a couple of dozen on the list she had compiled.

  ‘I’m sorry, I lost track of time.’

  ‘It’s fine.’

  She gathered her notes and quickly logged off. Paul apologised for seemingly pushing her out, but Grace felt a pang of guilt about keeping him so late. Apart from one old lady who had come in a couple of hours before and requested a book on pruning fruit trees, she had been the only customer all afternoon.

  On the way home, she stopped in to see Mrs. Oldfield. The old art teacher gave her a speculative eyebrow as she handed across the latest logo design, one of the mourning lady printed beneath the café’s name.

  ‘What do you think?’ Mrs. Oldfield said, as Grace held the t-shirt up in front of her.

  ‘It’s … nice.’

  ‘What does it make you think of?’

  The idea had felt like a good one, but as Grace stared at it, she knew what Joan would say. Resisting the urge to put on Joan’s voice, she said, ‘It makes us either look like a rock climbers’ club or a support circle.’

  Mrs. Oldfield gave a curt nod. ‘I didn’t want to say it, but you’ve stolen those words right out of my mouth. What would you like to try next?’

  24

  Acts of hostility

  ‘It’s unfair, is what it is,’ Jason said, as Joan patted him on the arm. Nearby, the barbeque was cracking quietly, three burgers nicely browning.

  ‘It happens,’ Joan said. ‘Big fish, small pond and all that.’

  ‘It should be for locals only,’ Jason grumbled, shaking his head. ‘What’s he coming down here for?’

  Grace listened with a mixture of emotions. Jason’s point of view was fair, but on the other hand, the Melrose Hill Bicycle Race was a public race and, since it was being televised, it was only right that it be open to anyone who wanted to enter. Who could tell a former pop-star they couldn’t join if they wanted to? After all, it was great publicity and would bring loads of extra tourists to the area for the weekend of the beach gala.

  And that it just happened to be Mike Anderson, he of the buns and the Adonis of Grace’s spinning class, on the comeback trail after his injury … wasn’t that perhaps a sign of fate?

  ‘He’s got a solo album coming out,’ Jason moaned. ‘Some radio friendly rubbish, and he figured he’d promote it by entering a bunch of local races around Devon and Cornwall, with copies given as raffle prizes. I have enough beer mats already. I don’t need any more.’

  ‘Weren’t you into Westlife?’ Joan said. ‘I seem to remember kids taking the Mickey out of you at school.’

  Jason pouted. ‘It was Backstreet Boys,’ he said. ‘And that was school. This is now.’

  Grace flipped the burgers as Joan consoled Jason. ‘Food’s ready,’ she said, wishing her cheerfulness didn’t seem too genuine. Part of her was really looking forward to seeing Mike. They’d never really spoken at her spinning class, but she’d caught his eye a couple of times. Perhaps there was something there….

  ‘Excuse me?’

  Grace looked around as the back door to the next chalet along opened and an elderly woman stepped outside. She leaned on the door frame and reached across the partition fence to tap on Grace’s patio door window with her walking stick.

  ‘My Gerald is trying to get some sleep. Do you mind keeping the noise down? This is the third time this week and I really don’t want to have to call the council.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Grace said, trying not to look at the face Joan was making out of the old woman’s line of view.

  ‘And the smell of that silly fire, it’s making our whole chalet stink,’ the woman continued. ‘Don’t you know about the carcinogens in fire? A microwave is much safer. You really should show more consideration for the people around you.’

  ‘Again, I’m sorry,’ Grace said. ‘We’ll finish it off quickly.’

  ‘Do you want me to get you a bucket of water?’ the woman asked, then turned and shuffled back inside without giving Grace time to answer.

  ‘Made a new friend there,’ Joan said, as the old woman’s door closed. ‘Happy summer.’

  ‘She arrived two days ago,’ Grace said. ‘She’s already told me off for playing the TV too loud, even though the chalet doesn’t have one. I think she’s hearing voices.’

  ‘Could be a ghost,’ Jason said. ‘You know, some of the houses back here are supposed to be haunted. There was an old prospective mining tunnel back in the hill there, which apparently collapsed around the turn of the eighteenth century. I know a song about it—’

  ‘No!’

  Jason clapped his hands together, stuck one foot out and leaned back on the heel. ‘There was a merry old man from Trevose, Trevose, who had a spot on the end of his nose—’

  Joan lifted a hand to silence Jason as the neighbouring chalet’s back door opened again and the woman reappeared. This time she was holding a mixing bowl filled with water. She carried it up to the little fence separating the two narrow back gardens, and held the bowl out to Grace.

  ‘Take this quickly, dear. My strength isn’t what it used to be.’

  Grace had just removed the burgers, and caught in the respect-thrall of an older person, she took the bowl without question.

  ‘Hold it low to the coals, dear, then pour it gently. That should reduce the amount of guff you get billowing up into the air.’

  Grace was aware of Joan and Jason sniggering behind her. Feeling like she ought to protest but held in a strange tractor beam of control, she did as commanded, dousing the flames with the water, then stepping back to avoid getting a faceful of charcoal steam.

  ‘That’s better, dear,’ the old woman said. ‘Let me have the bowl back, if you would. And do you have a fifty pence?’

  As Grace handed over the bowl, she said, ‘Fifty pence? What for?’

  ‘The water, of course. The bills are astronomical down in this part of the world. I don’t know how the council lets the water board get away with it.’

  Joan and Jason couldn’t stop laughing as they sat together on the promenade wall. As Grace sipped at the pint Jason had carried over from the pub, Joan shook h
er head.

  ‘Oh, that was hilarious. She made you pay for the water.’

  ‘I only had forty pence in change. I told her I’d drop another ten over in the morning. Thanks again for the pint, Jason.’

  ‘No worries. Do you need me to spot you that coin?’

  Grace shook her head. ‘No, I’m pretty sure I’ve got one hiding in a glove box in the car or something. Otherwise I can, you know, just go to the bank.’

  ‘If I find tomorrow night’s till off by ten pence I’ll be docking your wages,’ Joan said, smiling. ‘I guess that means our weekly barbeques are finished.’

  Grace gave a defiant shake of her head. ‘No chance. We’ll just carry the stuff over to the beach. There’s no law against it. And you know what? I’m going to make them bigger and better. Open to everyone. Let’s make this a summer to remember.’

  ‘Sounds good. Oh, looks like it’s going to rain. Anyone up for another pint indoors? Come on, Graceful, are you ready to break down the final frontier?’

  Grace looked across the street at the steps leading up to the Low Anchor’s entrance around the back. From open windows on the second floor came the sound of music and laughter.

  She had run into a lot of familiar friends and retread a lot of old ground during her weeks back in Blue Sands, but she had never managed to bring herself to step inside the pub. Once it had been her favourite place in the village, particularly in the summer when the tourists were about and it was buzzing with energy. Now, though, it was run by her ex-boyfriend and his perfect wife, and the thought of it made her feel uncomfortable in a way nothing else did.

  ‘I think I’ll get an early night,’ she said.

  As the rain became heavier, they finished their drinks and headed back across the road. At the foot of the steps, Joan said, ‘Are you sure?’

  Grace nodded. ‘I can’t face it … not right now.’

  ‘It’s all good. Jason and me will be in there until last orders if you change your mind.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  She watched them heading off, laughing and joking with each other as Jason pushed Joan’s chair around to the disabled-access entrance at the rear. Part of her was insanely jealous of their happiness, but that was becoming an increasingly lesser part as the days passed. Mostly she just felt happy for them, and it gave her more reason than ever to somehow save the café. It was Joan’s legacy; without it nothing would be the same.

  By the time she got back to her chalet, it was pouring with rain. She fumbled in her pockets for her key, but it was proving elusive. Just as her fingers crossed over it, the door to the adjacent flat opened and a rectangle of light appeared. Grace, huddled beneath the narrow overhang of her doorway, stood in silence as the elderly lady who had shut down their barbeque party appeared, huddled under an umbrella.

  ‘Come on, Gerald,’ she said. ‘Let’s have you out of there. Can’t have you going to sleep with a full bowel, can we? You’ll be passing wind all night.’

  A little tipsy, Grace had to slap a hand over her mouth. She stared in forced silence as, grunting, a little pug jumped down from the doorstep, wandered over to the chalet’s narrow patch of grass, and spread his legs apart while the women held the umbrella over him.

  ‘That’s it, get it all out. You know I can’t stand that cabbage smell, especially now I have to keep the windows shut. Good boy, Gerald. Now make sure you wipe your feet on the way in.’

  With another grunt, the little pug wandered back inside. The elderly woman leaned over the lump of brown on the grass. Then with a sigh and a shake of the head, she reached down with a trowel held in her free hand and scooped it up. She glanced at it a moment longer, then flicked it over the fence into Grace’s front garden.

  Still without having noticed Grace standing barely an arm’s length away, huddled in her dark doorway, the old woman turned and shuffled back inside, shutting the door behind her.

  Grace stared in disbelief at the dark shadow of the pug’s dump on her little patch of grass.

  It felt like a declaration of war.

  25

  Research

  As Grace fell off her bike and collapsed onto the grassy verge in a state of near-exhaustion, she glanced at her watch. When her eyesight stopped wavering she felt a momentary rush of excitement: it was her best time yet.

  She climbed up onto the nearest picnic table and sat gasping for air as her racing heart began to slow. Eight minutes and fifty-five seconds. It was an honourable attempt, but nowhere near enough. Jason reckoned he’d broken eight-thirty (‘although I was guessing from the clock because I forgot to start the timer’), but she had looked at Mike Anderson’s Instagram in the library yesterday, and he was boasting that he expected to break seven minutes. His thighs had never felt more powerful, he said, his butt like a piston engine ready to propel him to race and then chart success.

  Grace found she was going off him.

  From the picnic area, Blue Sands Cove looked beautiful today. A perfect blue sky, not a cloud to be seen, the sea like a pristine sheet of blue glass. It made all her problems easy to forget.

  Her watch beeped. Eight thirty. She climbed back onto the bike, heading back down into the valley, taking it easier this time after nearly hitting Isabella a few days before. As she descended past a couple of dog walkers, she gave Mrs. Oldfield and Daisy a smile, then her neighbour—whose name she had learned was Ethel Dottington—a curter smile as Gerald the pug nosed in the grass verge before cocking his leg over a patch of thistles.

  She started work at nine o’clock. Showered and changed, as she reached the front doors at a minute to nine, she glanced over at the beach.

  A thick white cloud hung low over the horizon.

  Sea mist.

  ‘You see it?’ Joan said, wheeling out through the doorway to meet her. ‘Better pick something good off the rack to read. Looks like it could be in all morning.’

  The unpredictable sea mist, which could roll in any time and completely blanket the coast in a cloud of cold, wet moisture, meant the beach would be deserted most of the day. The mobile families with cars would all head inland to the shops or the theme parks, while those stuck on the campsites would forgo ice-creams and sandwiches for an afternoon playing UNO or drinking in the pub. During high season, while it meant a day of low takings, it often provided a nice breather from endless streams of customers and aching forearms from scooping hard ice-cream for hours on end.

  Belinda had taken the day off, but the handful of hikers and dog walkers who stopped for a coffee was barely enough to keep one person busy.

  ‘Here she comes,’ Joan said, nodding through the window at the old woman making her way slowly along the promenade. ‘That’s her, right?’

  ‘Public fun spoiler number one,’ Grace said.

  Ethel came tottering across the road, Gerald waddling behind her. She tied the dog up outside then entered, glancing at Joan and Grace behind the counter without so much as a nod in greeting. Then, after a quick glance at the postcards, she made her way to the newspaper rack.

  ‘She was in here yesterday too,’ Joan said. ‘She went through every one, then wandered out again without buying a thing.’

  ‘Not like she needs one to wrap up her dog mess, is it?’ Grace whispered back.

  They watched Ethel nose through the papers for a while, before a group of hikers came in for a breakfast order. A few minutes later, after the group was seated and plates of egg and bacon had been delivered, they went back into the shop to find Ethel had gone.

  ‘Look,’ Joan said, wheeling around to the newspaper rack and pulling a badly folded paper out of the rack and rearranging it. ‘She doesn’t even put them back properly. Mum doesn’t care because we barely make anything off newspapers, but I think it’s taking the Michael, quite frankly.’

  ‘Perhaps we should dump a bucket of food waste onto her back lawn,’ Grace suggested.

  ‘Don’t tempt me.’

  With the sea mist staying in past lunchtime, meaning the beach wo
uld likely be empty even if it cleared, Joan decided to have a “wild moment” and close the café for the afternoon. A few minutes later, Jason appeared in a bright red, battered Volkswagen Beetle and whisked Joan away for an afternoon of shopping in Truro. Grace regrettably turned down the offer to “be the pusher so that J can carry the bags”, deciding instead to head up to the library and continue her emailing blitz of local news sites and bloggers. With the mist turning to warm, August rain, the library had attracted several elderly locals and a handful of tourists. Grace hid herself away in a corner booth while they bombarded Paul Davis with questions.

  About five o’clock, Paul came over to tell her the library was about to close. Outside, the rain had become torrential, leaving the valley a grey watercolour, Blue Sands Point and the cove visible only as indistinct smudges.

  ‘Do you need an umbrella?’ Paul asked, as she peered out of the doorway. ‘We get dozens of people leaving them behind. I can fish you one out of the back room.’ He smiled. ‘Do you have any kind of brand preference?’

  Grace laughed. ‘Do you have a Burberry?’

  ‘Actually, we do. It’s got a bent spoke, but otherwise its fine.’

  He went behind the counter into an office and reappeared a moment later with a tartan-designed umbrella.

  ‘It has to be worth fifty quid,’ he said. ‘A tourist left it behind last year. Never came back for it. Funny how umbrellas seem to be the ultimate disposable item. Apparently more than thirty thousand get left on the London Underground each year.’

  ‘I wonder what they do with them all?’

  ‘Give them to the Tate Modern to make sculptures, I imagine. I like to think they distribute them to the homeless, but I expect they’re all just sitting in a big room somewhere along with a few boxes of mobile phones.’