The Girl Who Came Home to Cornwall

by Emma Burstall

  The shack itself was a long, low, wooden hut atop a gentle mound, surrounded by sand and sea grass. Robert said that it had been in a terrible state when he bought it, with broken slats and windows and a gaping asphalt roof that let in the rain.

  Now, it was painted white with pillar-box red window frames and a door to match. All across the front was a red and white striped canvas awning that would look very jolly in the sunshine. Today, however, it was flapping angrily in the breeze and seemed in danger of flying off its wooden supports.

  Beneath it stood a patio heater, which was turned off, and some damp wooden tables and benches, optimistically laid with salt and pepper, ketchup, mayonnaise and glass jars of fresh flowers, weighed down with stones in the bottom to stop them blowing over.

  It all looked a bit windswept and uninviting, but it was easy to see why Robert had chosen to buy here and also why he’d opted to retain the original structure rather than knock the building down and start all over again.

  Even in this weather, there was a simple charm to the place, which seemed to blend into its surroundings so that you’d hardly know it was there. On a hot sunny day, when the crescent-shaped beach was filled with people, the awning would no doubt look like just another brightly coloured parasol or windbreak.

  If you stood with your back to the wide, rectangular window-cum-serving hatch, all you could see ahead was sand interspersed with little rock pools and miles and miles of ocean.

  What’s more, apart from a small surfing school to the left and a breeze-block shop selling body boards, towels, buckets and spades and suchlike, there was scant other evidence of human activity and, most importantly, nowhere else to buy food. On hot, sunny days, Robert would no doubt have a large, potentially very hungry and thirsty captive audience. He was clearly no fool.

  ‘Mornin’!’

  Chabela spun around to find a round-faced young woman with rather extraordinary pink hair sticking her head out of the open hatch.

  ‘I’m Loveday, Robert’s niece,’ she said in a strong Cornish accent, flashing a wide smile. ‘You must be Marbella.’

  ‘Er, Chabela,’ Chabela said, leaning through the window to shake the girl’s hand. ‘It’s really Isabela, but no one calls me that.’

  The girl bit her lip and frowned.

  ‘D’you mind if I just say Bella?’ she replied at last. ‘Cha… Chab… whatever you said, I’ll never remember it. I’m not very good with languages.’

  She seemed so friendly that Chabela couldn’t take offence, and soon Loveday was joined at the hatch by a tall, thin teenage boy with dark skin, brown eyes and orange flesh plugs in his ears.

  ‘This is Rafael. From Brazil,’ she explained, giving Chabela a meaningful look as if to say ‘you’re foreign, he’s foreign so you’re bound to get on’. ‘He’s doing weekends with his girlfriend, Rosie, Robert’s stepdaughter.’

  ‘She’s not my girlfriend, it’s just a thing,’ Rafael replied, quick as a flash, which seemed a little ungallant, especially as the girl in question had appeared now, too, and was eyeing Chabela up from behind a pair of thick, pale blue glasses.

  ‘I’m certainly not your girlfriend,’ Rosie said angrily, crossing her arms and glaring at the boy, who seemed to lose a few inches in height. ‘In your dreams. I wouldn’t go out with you if you begged me.’

  He looked hurt all of a sudden and opened his mouth to respond, but Loveday interrupted.

  ‘Quit arguing!’ she said, raising her eyes heavenward. ‘Bella’s only just arrived. She’ll think she’s come to a madhouse!’

  She wasn’t far wrong and it was with some trepidation that Chabela accepted an invitation to enter the café to be shown what was what.

  Now she understood that she was to be working with a pink-haired girl and two sulky teenagers, at least at weekends, she was beginning to have even greater doubts about the new job. But there was no going back now.

  The café was small, clean and crammed with expensive equipment, all neatly stacked and stowed, like a ship’s cabin. The walls were decorated with plain white, brick-shaped tiles and there were white cupboards and stainless steel worktops.

  A serious-looking black coffee machine took pride of place beside the serving hatch, and there was also an industrial-sized oven, a microwave, a sandwich toaster and a handsome square pie cabinet.

  There was absolutely no room for tables and chairs, which meant that everyone would have to sit outside.

  ‘The bathroom’s at the back,’ Loveday explained, pointing to an open door leading into a narrow corridor. ‘You can put your stuff in the cloakroom beside it. We always keep it locked during opening hours, so it’ll be quite safe.

  ‘By the way, that toilet’s only for staff. Everyone else has to use the public one on the beach, by the surf shop.’

  Now that she was indoors out of the wind and drizzle, Chabela was able to take a proper look at the girl, who was tall and big-boned, with an enormous bust that you couldn’t ignore, encased in a tight white T-shirt.

  She must have been in her early twenties and her pink hair was tied into two messy bunches, which stuck out at right angles and made her look like a naughty schoolgirl.

  Her dark brown eyes were heavily rimmed with kohl and she had numerous piercings in each ear, a silver ring in her nose and a stud just above her top lip.

  Despite all the metal, however, there was something rather endearing about her, as if she were trying very hard to look cool but couldn’t quite mask the goofy, vulnerable kid within.

  She tried several times to pull down her short, tight denim skirt but it kept riding up, and one of the silver buttons that went up the front was hanging by a thread. The top one, at the waist, wouldn’t fasten, so she’d used a safety pin instead.

  Glancing down, Chabela noticed that she was wearing a pair of very loud, white and pink trainers with enormous wedges that would make them quite impossible to exercise in. In fact, from Loveday’s slightly wobbly and uncomfortable-looking stance, it was clear that they weren’t particularly good for doing anything in, not even standing still.

  ‘What time do we open?’ she asked, glancing at a big brass ship’s clock on the wall.

  ‘Eleven,’ Loveday replied, fiddling with one of her pink bunches. ‘Only till the end of the month, though. After that it’ll be nine, and we won’t close till seven.’

  Chabela was a bit shocked. ‘Dios mío, that’s a long day! Robert didn’t tell me that.’

  Loveday raised one badly plucked black eyebrow. ‘He’s a sly one, my uncle. Comes across all nicey-nicey, like he wouldn’t hurt a fly, but he’s a slave-driver, really. He makes me work every other Sunday at the restaurant and it’s going to be the same here.

  ‘He knows I go drinking on Saturday night and on Sundays I’ve always got a hangover. Doesn’t make any difference to him, though. He says if the other staff have to do it, I do too or it wouldn’t be fair.’

  It sounded reasonable enough to Chabela, but Loveday had gone quite red and the last thing Chabela wanted was to upset her on Day One.

  ‘Oh dear,’ she said instead. ‘Well, I won’t be doing much on Saturday nights, seeing as I don’t know anyone. I can get here first if you like, and start setting up?’

  Loveday’s brown eyes sparkled and her sulky pout turned into a smile as wide as a watermelon.

  ‘Would you? Cheers! Maybe don’t mention it to my uncle though,’ she went on, lowering her voice. ‘Let’s keep it just between us, eh?’

  She went on to explain that there was to be a severely reduced menu today, as the place wasn’t likely to be busy. Rafael was charged with food preparation, which basically consisted of fetching some preprepared home-made chips from the freezer, heating up the deep-fat fryer, warming a vat of lentil soup and fixing some sandwich ingredients.

  There was also a range of freshly baked cakes, biscuits and scones, which Rosie set out on pretty red and white china plates under a glass display case on the serving counter.

  On the back wall,
clearly visible through the open window, was a giant blackboard on which someone had already written out the menu and prices in a bold italic hand. A smaller board to the right had a list of artisan ice creams in a variety of flavours including vanilla, pistachio, raspberry and pear.

  Just thinking about ice cream today made Chabela shiver and she rather wished that she’d brought a woolly hat and scarf with her as well. The busiest job that day was likely to be making hot drinks, which sounded very appealing, but Loveday said that as she was a trained barista, she’d be in charge of the coffee machine while Rosie would make the mugs of tea and hot chocolate.

  With Rafael on food, Chabela was to assume the role of general dogsbody, which would include keeping the kitchen clean, the floor swept, clearing the outside tables and helping with anything else that needed doing.

  It could have been humiliating to have to take orders from Loveday, who was so much younger, but Chabela had made up her mind to swallow her pride and just get on with it. Café work was so far out of her range of normal experience that it felt like quite a novelty and in some ways more daunting than writing a five thousand word thesis on Mexican geopolitics.

  Rosie fetched some clean red and white striped aprons from the cloakroom and once Chabela had hers on, she felt quite the part. Gazing out of the hatch, however, she wondered whether they would have any customers today at all.

  The sky was still murky grey and the wind was playing games with the sand, whipping up the grains which hopped, leaped and scurried along before blending into flurries of shape-shifting fabric.

  Sometimes, the gustiness would turn into a gale and the flurries would become continuous sheets, hurtling across the beach like a marauding army of dust. Surely no one in their right mind would venture here today?

  ‘Can we have some music?’ Chabela said suddenly, noticing a red, retro-style radio in the corner of the kitchen. ‘Is that allowed?’

  ‘Good idea!’ Rafael glanced hopefully at Loveday, who nodded, and he swiftly removed his plastic sandwich-making gloves, wiped his hands on some kitchen roll and strode towards the radio.

  Soon, country and western was blasting out and Chabela felt her spirits lift a little, even more so when an Elvis track came on and Rafael started doing a silly impersonation of him in the middle of the room, until Loveday shouted at him to stop.

  ‘I hate Elvis,’ she said angrily. ‘I’d rather have silence.’

  ‘How about some Mexican music instead?’ Chabela suggested, and before anyone could object, she had fished the phone out of her pocket and found Rodrigo Amarante’s ‘Tuyo’.

  ‘Soy el fuego que arde tu piel…’ came the familiar, haunting voice. I am the fire that burns your skin…

  Immediately she was transported back to her apartment in Mexico City on one particular summer’s evening. The balcony doors had been open, letting in the warm night air. She could hear the gentle hum of voices outside, the occasional car rumbling by. There was a sweet scent of jacaranda in the air and the sky had been filled with stars. She had danced to this very song with Alfonso, just the two of them, hand to hand, cheek to cheek, heart to beating heart.

  A stab of regret and longing almost took her breath away and without thinking, she closed her eyes and found herself raising her arms high, swinging her head and swaying slightly as she sang along to the music. She’d always loved dancing.

  ‘Tú el aire que respiro yo…’ You’re the air that I breathe…

  A painful lump formed in her throat and a tear dribbled down the side of her nose and onto her chin, which she wiped away with the back of her hand.

  ‘Tuyo será, y tuyo será…’ Yours it will be, and yours it will be…

  ‘Are you all right?’

  The sound of Loveday’s voice jolted her back to the present.

  ‘Yes, absolutely,’ Chabela said briskly, taking hold of the broom again, which she had been using to sweep sand off the floor. ‘I love that song so much, especially the lyrics.’

  She flashed Loveday a smile as if to say there’s nothing whatever the matter – but she could tell by the girl’s expression that she wasn’t fooled.

  ‘Have you always lived in Mexico?’ she asked shyly, tipping her head to one side.

  Chabela said that she had.

  ‘Does your family live there, too?’

  ‘I don’t have much in the way of the family,’ she replied truthfully. ‘My parents divorced when I was very young and I barely knew my father. I don’t have any brothers or sisters and my mother died a few years ago. I have a few cousins, but we’re not close.’

  ‘And…?’ Loveday swallowed. Chabela could guess what she was thinking but didn’t quite dare to ask.

  ‘I’m not married,’ she said quickly, to put the girl out of her misery. ‘And I don’t have children.’

  ‘Oh!’

  Loveday looked stricken. If Chabela had told her that she had terminal cancer, it wouldn’t have been more of a tragedy. Her eyes even started to fill up.

  ‘I’m… I’m so sorry…’ she stuttered, but Chabela interrupted her flow.

  ‘I’m married to my work, to be honest with you.’ She flashed a wide smile. ‘And I never really wanted children, I’m not the maternal type.’

  This seemed to reassure Loveday, whose compassion quickly morphed into incredulity.

  ‘Really? I never met anyone before who didn’t want kids. My mate Lauren’s got two and she’s only nineteen! I think I’ll wait till I’m quite a bit older, though,’ she added sensibly. ‘Maybe twenty-one. I don’t really want to be a young mum. I want to experience life first.’

  Rafael had his back turned to the women but he’d obviously been listening in.

  ‘My mum has eight kids,’ he announced suddenly. ‘And she was one of fourteen. Women have to start young if they want that many.’

  He had a slight Cornish burr, mixed in with Brazilian Portuguese, which made it quite hard for Chabela to understand.

  ‘I’m definitely not having fourteen kids!’ Loveday declared and Rosie looked appalled.

  ‘Me neither. I only want two – a boy and a girl.’

  She glanced at Rafael, who remained resolutely facing the other way.

  ‘I don’t want any, not till I’m at least twenty-six anyway.’

  ‘Positively middle-aged,’ Chabela said with a wry smile, but the joke went unnoticed. She wondered what these three must make of her, a woman of thirty-nine. Perhaps they imagined that she’d come to Cornwall to retire.

  For over an hour, the beach remained deserted and for a while the rain drove down so hard that Chabela wondered if they’d be washed away.

  She felt a bit like Noah on his ark, with no one for company save a few strange fellow human creatures, clinging to her and each other for comfort, trying hard to keep up their spirits by jigging to the music which was now turned up full blast to drown out the deluge.

  She was bent double, wiggling her hips to the beat as she peered under the fridge for a teaspoon that she’d dropped, when she heard a deep voice behind her.

  ‘Any chance of a cuppa?’

  Ay caramba! Her cheeks shot into flame. She’d had no idea that anyone was there.

  Rising quickly, she turned around and saw a tall, hefty man standing at the hatch, wearing a green waxed jacket and wide-brimmed hat that was literally dripping wet. Twisting rivulets were slipping and sliding onto the brim before splashing off the edge like water from a garden sprinkler.

  It was quite difficult to make out any features, because the hat came down so low, but you couldn’t miss the man’s large, bushy grey beard and sideburns that trailed down his cheeks like damp seaweed.

  There was something strangely familiar about them and Chabela racked her brains to remember why. Then it dawned on her: wasn’t he the man who ran the gift shop on the corner of South Street, with whom she’d chatted briefly on her second day in the village? Simon’s friend. She was pretty certain that they were one and the same.

  He seemed to re
cognise her, too, and politely removed his soaking hat to unveil an impressive pair of shaggy eyebrows, complete with ill-disciplined strays that shot out at right angles like daddy-long-legs.

  ‘Haven’t we met before?’ he said in what sounded like a rather awkward attempt at nonchalance. ‘I believe I failed to sell you one of my postcards.’ This was accompanied by an ironic smile.

  Chabela smoothed down her apron and smiled back.

  ‘Actually, I know who you are,’ he said quickly, which rather undermined his earlier comments. ‘Simon Hosking told me about your mission and I’m looking into it for you.’

  ‘How kind of you!’ she replied, walking swiftly over to the radio to turn down the volume. For some reason the others hadn’t seemed to notice that you could hardly hear the stranger speak. ‘That’s better.’

  Rick, as she now knew him to be, looked relieved and started to talk a little bit about his interest in amateur local history.

  ‘I collect old books on the subject – mostly out of print. I must have hundreds. I run a local history group on a Thursday evening at the Methodist church hall. Why don’t you come along to the next one? A lady called Florence is giving a talk on sanitation through the ages. She’s done a good deal of research. It should be very interesting. It’s called “Living with the smell” and it starts at seven thirty. The admission fee is two pounds, but I’m happy to waive that as you’ll be a first-timer.’

  Chabela was aware of a volley of snorts coming from somewhere nearby and, turning to look, she unintentionally caught Rafael’s eye. The bad boy was shaking with laughter.

  She flashed him a stern look and he bowed his head and covered his mouth with a hand, but his shoulders were still quivering and to her dismay, her own started to wobble, too.

  ‘That sounds fascinating,’ she said to Rick, digging her nails hard into the palms of her hands. ‘What can I get you? Tea? Coffee? A nice piece of cake, perhaps?’

  For some reason this seemed to amuse Rafael even more, and he tried to involve Rosie by calling to her on the opposite side of the kitchen and asking if she fancied going to the smells talk, too.