The Christmas Café

by Amanda Prowse

  She was returning to the UK after all this time, returning to the strange land that she had once called home.

  Ten

  A fortnight later and Bea was pottering in the Kitchen, reluctant to leave and feeling more and more anxious as the time to go approached. ‘I’ve told you about paying the fish man, and the Wednesday delivery, haven’t I?’

  ‘Yes, boss.’ Tait smiled. ‘Twice.’

  ‘Sorry! I’m a bit nervous.’ Bea twisted her bangles.

  ‘You don’t say?’ Tait laughed as she paced in front of the sink.

  ‘You’re going to have the best time!’ Kim interjected from inside the fridge.

  ‘I know.’ Bea nodded. ‘I got a lovely email from Alex, saying how it will be nice to put a face to the name. Must admit, we have really clicked! Despite her love of cats.’

  ‘Well, we don’t have to wait till you get there, we can google her if you like,’ Kim offered, opening the laptop on the sideboard. ‘Miss Alex McKay, Christmas Café.’ She sounded out the words as she typed.

  Bea smiled at her in the seconds they waited for the results.

  Kim leant forward, twisting her body slightly and manoeuvring the screen, making it hard for Bea to see.

  ‘Oh. My. God.’ Kim slammed the lid shut and turned to her boss. ‘On second thoughts, I think you should just turn up and be surprised!’ She gave an awkward smile.

  ‘Don’t be daft, Kim! Show me! What’s wrong? You know me, I don’t judge people, and neither should you.’ She gave her a knowing look. ‘Let me see her!’ Bea made a grab for the laptop.

  Kim shook her head. ‘I’m afraid you can’t.’

  ‘Kim, you’re starting to bug me. Come on, just show me her picture!’ Bea raised her voice, alerting Tait, who came over to investigate.

  ‘What’s all the racket?’ he asked.

  ‘I want to see a picture of Alex, my e-penfriend who’s in Scotland, and Kim, for some bizarre reason, won’t let me see her!’

  Kim sat tight. ‘I told you. I c-c-can’t!’ The close proximity of Tait had thrown her a little.

  Bea folded her arms. ‘Kim! Wyatt will be here any second and I insist you show me her picture, right now!’ The joke was wearing thin.

  Kim opened the laptop and pressed a button that made the picture spring back up. ‘I can’t show you a picture of her because she isn’t a she. Alex McKay, proprietor of the Christmas Café, is in fact...’ She turned the laptop so Bea had the best view. ‘A man!’

  Bea stared open-mouthed at the image on the screen. It showed a youthful grey-haired man with quite a large nose and a smiling mouth that revealed even teeth. He was wearing a denim shirt and what looked suspiciously like a silver bangle. ‘Well, there must be a mistake!’ Bea bent close to the screen. ‘It must be a different Alex McKay!’

  ‘Nope.’ Kim scrolled through some other documents. ‘It’s definitely him. Does it matter?’

  Bea placed her hand on her chest. ‘Oh shit! Oh no!’ She put her head in her palms and cringed as she bent double.

  ‘I don’t see what the problem is. Your e-penfriend is a bloke, big deal!’ Tait shrugged. ‘It’s 2014, men and women can be mates without it meaning anything – isn’t that right, Kim?’

  ‘Yup. Uh-huh.’ Kim swallowed her desire to scream.

  ‘You don’t understand.’ Bea’s breath came in shallow pants. ‘The way I wrote to him... I would never have been so open had I known he was a bloke. I told him about how I was feeling in quite an intimate way.’ She screwed up her face as if in physical pain. ‘I admitted to him that I have a pouchy stomach!’ And a lot worse besides, she thought. All that confessing about how lonely she was without a man by her side. ‘Oh no!’ She cringed again.

  Kim threw her head back and let out a loud, resonating laugh. ‘That’s hilarious!’

  Bea shook her head. ‘No. No, it isn’t! It’s terrible. What must he think of me? Telling him my most personal thoughts. The sort of stuff I only share with my girlfriends. I had no idea!’

  Kim laughed into her palm. ‘It’s too funny! Mousy Miss McKay with her cat friends is actually this hunk!’ She clicked on another picture and turned it to face Bea. This time he was in a dinner jacket, raising a glass towards the camera.

  ‘Oh, stop!’ Bea sighed. ‘We’ve even been putting kisses at the bottom of our emails, which I thought nothing of because she’s a woman! But she’s a man! He’s a man! Oh God! Oh no!’

  ‘Bea, look on the bright side, if this is a budding relationship, at least you haven’t got to worry about the slow burn of getting to know each other. He already knows so much about you!’ Kim chuckled.

  ‘Oh, please don’t, Kim. You’re not helping.’

  Kim beamed. ‘I’m sorry, but it’s just too funny!’

  ‘Think of it as speed dating!’ Tait added.

  ‘Oh, for goodness sake, you two, we are not dating!’ Bea shouted a little louder than she’d intended. ‘I just thought I had made a lovely new friend.’ She ran her hand over her face, wincing with embarrassment. ‘Maybe we won’t see him after all. Maybe it’s best we just don’t make any contact and he will forget we are arriving and that’ll be that.’

  ‘Good luck with that!’ Tait snorted.

  Bea glanced at her watch, willing Wyatt to appear sooner rather than later. ‘God, the waiting is killing me! I just want to get under way.’

  Tait swung through the doors into the café, leaving her and Kim alone.

  ‘I was thinking, this might be very exciting. Are you sure you didn’t know Alex was a bloke? Maybe at some level you were looking for a nice little dalliance?’

  Bea stared at her employee in confusion. ‘Kimberley, I think you think too much!’

  ‘You’re still blushing!’ Kim teased. ‘I was just wondering if maybe you had hooked up on Tinder and the sausage club is just a ruse and you are in fact planning on liaising with your beau in the Highlands!’ She threw her head back and laughed.

  ‘Goodness me, do people actually do that? Hook up on Tinder, whatever that is? No, in fact, don’t answer me, I don’t want to know.’ Bea raised her palm. ‘And as if I would go all the way to Edinburgh for some sex! The very idea.’

  ‘Even the way you say “some sex” makes me laugh. It’s like, “Would you like some chips, some advice, some sex?”’ Kim snorted the laughter through her nose.

  ‘Well, I’m glad you find it funny, although the very thought of heading off anywhere for a Tinder, or whatever it is, I find quite disturbing. If I was looking for a man, that wouldn’t be how I’d do it. I’d rather be introduced by someone that knows me. Not that I’m looking!’ she emphasised.

  ‘I thought it seemed logical. Wanting to make an illicit trip but not wanting to go alone. Taking Flora as your decoy.’

  ‘Logical to you, maybe, but I can think of places a darn sight closer to Surry Hills to go for sex!’

  ‘Really? Where? Do tell!’

  Bea tutted and adjusted her bangles. ‘I was speaking figuratively.’

  ‘Oh, how disappointing. Although, as you’ve hinted, maybe your days of illicit sex are behind you...’

  ‘Is that right? What do you think happens, Kim? It’s not that my body and mind aren’t willing; of course they are! What holds me back is more an acute sense of embarrassment at the thought of stripping off in front of someone. That, and I think I’ve actually forgotten what to do!’ She leant on Kim, laughing, trying to imagine conducting a similar conversation with her boss, however many moons ago. ‘But that’s the point, darling. No matter how past it my age might seem to you now, it really isn’t. And you will one day discover that there isn’t a switch that gets flicked at forty-seven that stops you thinking about, indulging in or desiring sex! It’s not as though we all stop fancying each other and turn our attention to doing crosswords and growing tomatoes!’

  ‘Well, no, not at forty-seven, obviously. But at forty-eight, surely!’ Kim smirked.

  Bea pushed her hair behind her eyes. ‘I live in the sam
e world as you, where sex sells products, where every advertisement and every magazine article is illustrated with the perfect body of some unfeasibly gorgeous twenty-year-old. The world sells its objects and services using sex and I am part of that world, no matter how removed I might feel from it or how unpalatable that might be to you and your peers. Just because I have the slightly crumpled body of a woman in her fifties does not mean I don’t still have the mind and desires of a woman much, much younger. Sadly.’

  ‘I guess.’ Kim looked a bit nonplussed. ‘But it can’t be like it is for me and my friends, can it? On a quest for sex half the time. It must all calm down, surely?’

  Bea smiled at Kim’s expression, could see that she was desperately hoping the answer would be no.

  ‘No. It’s not like that. Granted.’

  Kim exhaled, looking relieved.

  ‘But that doesn’t mean I don’t find people attractive or that I don’t want companionship or comfort from another human, a man. I still want that, but as you hit middle age, it’s difficult, different.’

  ‘Why, because there aren’t nightclubs and bars that you can drop into and pull?’

  Bea rolled her eyes. ‘No, because everyone my age is slightly bruised by experience and many of us either can’t be bothered or life has put us off trying. It can feel like too much effort, too disrupting.’

  ‘That sounds depressing! And I thought it was tough being my age.’

  ‘I guess it is slightly depressing. We certainly can’t be taken in by the sort of rhetoric that used to work when we were young. We’re far too cynical. Plus we all carry a large amount of guilt.’

  ‘Ooh, what, like skeletons in the cupboard and dodgy dealings that you don’t want discovered?’ Kim raised her eyebrows but kept her eyes fixed on the counter in front of her.

  ‘No, not that!’ Bea chuckled. ‘But old age does leave you feeling a little exposed; it’s difficult to hide anything. We tend to carry the guilt of things we should or shouldn’t have done. Our successes and failures aren’t hypothetical any more – they’re visible right there on our faces, in our histories. We can’t invent a future or hook people in with our marvellous potential.’

  ‘I thought you might have less to worry about as you get older, making you a bit more jolly about life, more optimistic.’

  Bea liked her rationale. ‘It’s not that you worry less but that your worries evolve. Like when you have babies, you worry are they too hot, too cold, are they going to die in their sleep? And then when they start school, will they run out in front of a car? Then suddenly they are driving a car and you worry that they might crash! And then we worry that they’ll get their hearts broken or take drugs... On and on it goes. You never stop worrying, it’s just that the worries change.’

  ‘God, I never realised that kids were such a pain in the arse! Not sure if that’s a road I will travel anyway. I don’t think Tait wants kids, not for a long while. In fact I know he doesn’t.’ She gave a wry smile.

  ‘They are a pain in the arse, as you put it. But they are also the greatest joy.’ She shot Kim a steely look. ‘And you certainly can’t decide now whether it’s a road you will travel or not. Trust me, despite what the media would have you believe, it’s usually a road that chooses you. The world’s moving fast and who knows how you will feel or who you might meet – next month, next year. Maybe your future is with Tait, maybe it isn’t! And that’s the point, really; the longer you’re on the planet, the more balanced your view.’

  ‘Because you’ve been around long enough to see everything...’

  Bea smiled and thought of the things she still hoped she would see and achieve. ‘Yes, something like that. I guess the older you get, the harder it is to be surprised.’

  ‘Oh, a life without surprises would be brilliant!’

  Bea gazed at Kim’s profile. Her own philosophy was the exact opposite. ‘Older people are like a book that’s two thirds written, so the scope to change the ending is reduced. Much more importantly, however, we also share a secret that we almost never divulge. But I shall let you in on it – okay?’

  Kim nodded. ‘I shan’t tell a soul!’

  ‘Life is for the brave, Kim. You have to chase the life you want and grab it. So if you really want Tait, and I believe you do, then make it happen! Don’t be defined by anyone else; don’t worry about Janine, or whoever. Just be yourself, because one day you’ll blink and it will be too late to tread your own path. You might find you’re walking the route that someone else has ploughed for you.’

  ‘Jesus Christ, Bea, you are on a downer!’

  ‘I don’t mean to be. You just have to make sure that you, like me, have an amazing and rich life, a real roller-coaster that takes you as high as you can possibly go. Getting older is nothing to be sad about; it’s to be celebrated!

  Kim sighed. ‘I know you’re right, I do need to dive in, I can just never find the right time. And I know that time is ticking by and nothing changes for me.’ She looked towards the swing doors. ‘No matter how much I want it to.’

  ‘You need to make the change, Kim; you can’t wait for it to come to you. I’m double your age and I am raring to go!’

  ‘Ooh, lucky Alex!’ Kim laughed.

  ‘Oh, for goodness sake, Kim, do stop!’ she snapped.

  ‘I’m sorry. I was only mucking about, I didn’t mean to tease you.’

  ‘I think we both know that’s a lie.’

  Kim laughed. ‘Are you sure you’re not the teeniest bit interested in Mr McKay, the silver-fox charmer?’

  ‘No! Absolutely not. I’m just mortified.’ Bea shook her head, rather embarrassed by the suggestion.

  A horn honked in the road.

  ‘Oh, that’ll be Wyatt.’ Bea gathered her bag and for the umpteenth time checked that her passport, wallet and phone were all in their little compartments, before making her way out to the front of the cafe.

  She kissed Kim on the cheek. ‘Thank you, darling, for everything.’

  ‘Go! Enjoy yourself! And don’t worry, we can handle things here,’ Kim assured her.

  Bea hugged Tait. ‘Right, you two, you have all my numbers if you need anything. Mario will be here tomorrow and I shall see you in a couple of weeks!’

  ‘Have a great time, Bea, we shall miss you both!’ Kim pushed out her bottom lip.

  ‘We’ll be right though, Kimmy?’ Tait winked.

  Kim nodded briskly; her blush was fuchsia, she didn’t trust herself to respond.

  ‘And if you bump into my aunty or my cousin Gideon, give them my love.’ Tait beamed.

  ‘Oh yes, of course. Where do Gideon and his mum live?’ Bea asked.

  ‘Weston-Super-Mare.’ Tait smiled.

  Bea laughed. ‘Tait, if we are anywhere near Weston-Super-Mare, our travel plans will have gone drastically awry. It’s about as far from Edinburgh as you can get!’

  ‘How should I know?’ Tait shrugged.

  ‘I’ve left a little something for you both in the larder. Not your actual Christmas pressies, but a pre-Christmas thank you.’

  ‘Aww, Bea! Thank you!’ they chorused.

  She had left them both beautiful wicker hampers full of tempting festive treats, including a bottle of bubbly and a dainty, beribboned box of fancy handmade chocolates from Haigh’s in the Queen Victoria Building.

  Bea blew kisses as she wheeled her suitcase ahead of her and made her exit. She climbed into the passenger seat of Wyatt’s Holden and immediately sensed that she’d entered the scene of an argument. Flora looked tense, her scowl giving way to a weak smile as she greeted her gran.

  ‘Excited?’ Bea asked.

  Flora nodded and popped her earphones into her ears.

  ‘Talk some sense into her while you’re out there, won’t you?’ Wyatt said as he navigated Elizabeth Street, passing the train station. He addressed his comment to the windscreen from behind his mirrored sunnies, speaking as if Flora wasn’t there.

  ‘Gosh, Flora is far more sensible than me, I should think
it’ll be her giving me advice!’

  Wyatt gave an almost imperceptible shake of his head.

  As the car turned into Botany Road, Bea spotted Mr Giraldi hovering by the kerb. His straw trilby was keeping the sun from his head and he was dabbing at his face and neck with a blue spotted handkerchief. He had obviously just been shopping as his Harris Farm bag was straining at the handles, no doubt full of the large oranges that he loved. Bea waved furiously. Mr Giraldi caught her eye and, quite forgetting his cantankerous reputation, waved back as his face broke into a beautiful smile, his eyes following her face until she was out of sight.

  Wyatt’s hands tightened on the steering wheel, letting her know that even this interaction had somehow irritated him. But as she had said to Flora only recently, that was just tough luck.

  Wyatt dropped them at Terminal One, awkwardly hugging his daughter and grazing his mother’s cheek with a misplaced kiss. They would reunite just before Christmas, after he and Sarah had returned from Bali. Both Bea and Flora were excited at the prospect of flying from the international terminal, even though the flight would take them a whole day; it was nearly ten hours to Hong Kong, then another sixteen via Amsterdam to Edinburgh.

  ‘Are we going to visit Miss Alex and her many cats when we arrive?’ Flora asked suddenly as they were boarding their plane. She dissolved into giggles, which made Bea smile. ‘Kim sent me a text and told me to ask you that! I don’t even know why it’s funny!’

  ‘Ha.’ Bea tutted. ‘Tell Miss Kim that maybe we will.’

  Despite the seemingly interminable flight, there was something about being cocooned in a warm plane with a blanket wrapped around them and having nowhere to go and nothing to do that lulled them to sleep. Having watched the couple of movies that jumped out at them, they both slept soundly for the best part of eight hours.