Christmas at Little Beach Street Bakery

by Jenny Colgan

  It just looked like so much work. Also there was a present list of about sixteen people on the email, all of whom Polly knew were terribly rich. She wasn’t sure of the protocol, though: did that mean they liked fancy presents, or did it mean they had everything and barely even noticed if they got a Christmas present or not? Well, regardless, she had a tiny budget for that kind of thing. In fact she was seriously considering simply making two dozen fruitcakes and handing those out instead. Everyone liked fruitcake, didn’t they? Mind you, this being Reuben’s family, someone would be allergic to something. She’d never met a more Piriton-dependent man.

  She sighed and looked up from serving old Mrs. Larson, who bought half a loaf every day, ate four slices for her tea with soup and sprinkled the rest for the birds, even though the local birds were tiger-sized seagulls who would eat a rabbit if they could get it to stay still long enough. Polly was worried that one day one of them would swoop down and do for Mrs. Larson, who was tiny and frail and whose eyesight wasn’t as great as it had been and who was entirely capable of mistaking a gigantic seagull for a beautiful lark that was closer than it looked. And just at that moment, Reuben banged through the door, looking cheerful.

  “Hey!” he said. “Right, so I’ve got this list.”

  “What list?”

  “A list of, you know. Stuff we want to eat at Christmas.”

  Polly took the list and scanned down it. Warm baguettes . . . gingerbread men . . . a gingerbread house, full-sized . . . 16 loaves of rye bread . . . 14 loaves of wholemeal . . . 60 latkes . . .

  She looked up.

  “I thought we were invited to your house for Christmas?”

  “Yeah, of course you are,” said Reuben, completely unabashed. “It’s going to be great!”

  “But I don’t want to be catering at Christmas time! I don’t want to be working at all. It’s Christmas. I want to take some time off and mostly stay in bed and not go to work!”

  “But Polly,” said Reuben, his face creasing in incomprehension, “we’re going to need baked stuff. You do the best baked stuff. I don’t know how to say it more clearly than that.”

  His face lit up.

  “Man, I wonder what you’re going to charge me to bake at a really inconvenient time for you.”

  “No, Reuben,” said Polly.

  “I think it would be a really horrific amount of money. I mean, seeing as my only alternative would be to helicopter in supplies from Poilâne in Paris. So you guys would have to charge me something totally disgusting. Man, it’s really going to hurt me in the wallet. I mean, ow. Ow, that is such a painful amount of money. Even to me. Oww.”

  “Stop it, Reuben!” said Polly.

  “Well, of course if you don’t really need the money . . .”

  “Stop it! I just want one quiet Christmas without being up to my eyeballs in flour!”

  “I thought you liked baking.”

  “I do like baking! As a JOB. As a JOB I like it.”

  Reuben raised his eyebrows as he backed out of the shop.

  “You know,” he said. “They say people who love their jobs never work a day in their lives.”

  “Shoo,” said Polly. “Get out of here! I mean it!”

  “Don’t worry too much about the ninety-six bagels,” added Reuben. “I think I’ll just get them sent over from Katz. No offense, Polly, but your bagels pretty much suck.”

  “GET OUT!”

  The queue of old ladies looked at Polly with disapproval in their eyes.

  “Isn’t that the young man who’s going to rebuild the school?” said one.

  “Yeah, all right,” said Polly, cross and conflicted.

  “And he’s going to be a father,” said Mrs. Larson, sniffing. “You’d think he’d deserve a little kindness.”

  Polly began to fill up bags slightly lighter on the doughnuts than they usually were.

  How on earth would she break it to Huckle? On the other hand, there was absolutely no doubt about it: they were completely skint. His honey just didn’t cut it. They didn’t need much, but the lighthouse mortgage was big and . . .

  She heaved a frustrated sigh. She knew that in the scheme of problems—Kerensa’s, for example—this wasn’t much. But she so longed for a quiet time this Christmas. Last year with her mother had been slightly awkward—not her mum’s fault, she knew. And the year before that had been heartbreaking, with Huckle away in the States and her entire future hanging in the balance. All she wanted was a bit of a respite. Just the two of them, celebrating the huge next step they were about to take.

  She knew she should be happy and grateful. That it was really selfish to wish for more than she had, when she had so much already. But she had imagined everything proceeding nice and relaxed, just as it was, for a little while. Then at some point in the future, when things weren’t so hectic and mad, she’d enjoy the stage, and babies and things, but in a while.

  This was, she knew, utterly ridiculous. They were engaged. He was committed. He was the love of her life beyond measure.

  It was stupid to care about it. And she’d never really seen herself as a bride; it wasn’t the kind of thing she dreamed about. Everything she dreamed about was here in the Little Beach Street Bakery: the tinkling of the bell as customers came in; the never-ending pleasure of the scent of fresh bread; the satisfaction of baking and feeding people. That was her dream.

  Anyway, that was hardly the most pressing issue. First she had to break it to Huckle that she’d basically ruined his dream Christmas. Or else turn down Reuben’s money. And she knew it would be a lot of money. Enough to pay to get the windows sealed up against the January storms, or . . . No. She still didn’t want to do it.

  On the other hand, imagine having to spend Christmas at Reuben’s with the entire conversation circling round how selfish she’d been for not making the bread and the cakes—basically for not having done all the catering.

  To which Huckle would say, great, let’s not go at all, and Kerensa would give that tragic washed-out sigh and make those puppy-dog eyes again to show how horribly sad she was, and the wind would continue to blast through the bedroom windows.

  The old ladies had left, and Selina snuck in tentatively through the back door.

  “Have the biddies moved out? Man, they give me such a hard time about whether I’ve found a nice young man yet.”

  Selina had had a brief torrid affair with Huckle’s brother DuBose, but they tended not to mention it.

  “They just want everyone to be happy,” said Polly weakly, given that she’d just fended them off herself.

  “They don’t,” said Selina darkly. “They want stuff to happen so they can gossip about it and say it’s awful.”

  “That too,” admitted Polly. “Oh Lord, what should I do?” She explained her dilemma about Christmas, skipping the Kerensa part.

  “Don’t go,” said Selina promptly. “Are you nuts? Why would you do that? You’re not starving. Okay, you bought a stupid house; that’s your fault. Rent it out or something. But it’s Christmas; for heaven’s sake, just enjoy yourself. Somebody has to.”

  The bell tinged, and a man burst through the door. He was broad and sandy-haired, with bright blue eyes. Selina immediately perked up.

  “Ooh, did I just make a wish I didn’t know about?”

  She turned around and smiled.

  “Hello, can I help you?”

  “Selina!” said Polly. “You don’t actually work here at the moment.”

  “This is more or less my house,” said Selina.

  “Less,” said Polly firmly.

  The man looked agitated.

  “I’m looking for . . . I’m looking for the lady with the puffin.”

  “Ha,” said Polly. “Um, sorry.” She wiped her floury hands on her apron. “Hello. I’m Polly Waterford.”

  The man shook her hand. He was about thirty-five, weather-beaten, but in an attractive way. His eyes crinkled a lot when he smiled. He had an Australian accent.

  “Hi,” he
said. “Look. We need money.”

  Polly looked at him for a long time.

  “Well then,” she said, “you’ve totally come to the wrong place.”

  Chapter Ten

  They made coffee and eventually calmed the man down a bit. He told them that his name was Bernard, and that he was the head of the puffin sanctuary up on the north coast, near Reuben’s house. Polly had tried twice to release Neil into the wild up there; both times it had been an epic failure, much to her deep and profound relief. Neil, it turned out, was not at all a fan of the wild, although the last time he had at least returned with Celeste.

  “We just heard,” he said, shaking his head despairingly. “Kara told me.”

  Kara was the capable New Zealand girl, Polly remembered, who’d taken Neil both times to release him.

  “Heard what?”

  “They’re cutting our budget,” he said. “Government cuts. Apparently puffins aren’t a priority in our austerity culture.”

  “What?” said Polly, shocked to the core.

  “I know,” said Bernard. “They’re endangered, you know.”

  “How are they endangered?” said Selina. “I thought you had like two million or something.”

  “Yeah,” said Bernard. “But fewer and fewer all the time. The sea’s getting too warm.”

  “Didn’t feel like that this morning,” said Selina, looking outside to where the wind was still blowing.

  “Yeah, well, local weather isn’t anything to do with it, is it?” he said, with a sudden flash of anger.

  “Ooh,” said Selina. “You’re feisty. I like that.”

  “But what about the school parties?” said Polly. “I see them all the time.”

  “Neh,” said Bernard. “The schools have all had their budgets cut too, haven’t they? No more of that kind of thing. And the kids aren’t really interested any more. Either they’re all off playing Laser Quest or . . .”

  He looked as if he was going to sob.

  “They’ve got kestrels down the road,” he said, deeply wounded. “A birds of prey exhibition. You can hold a hawk and launch a falcon.”

  “Oooh,” said Polly. “That sounds . . . I mean, that doesn’t sound anything like as interesting as what puffins do.”

  “Puffins don’t do anything,” said Bernard bitterly. “They don’t do tricks. Unless you count swimming at forty kilometers an hour and flying at twice that speed and having the best air-to-weight ratio of almost any living thing and mating for life and—”

  “You know a lot about puffins,” said Selina. “Watch out, Polly likes that in a man.”

  Bernard didn’t seem to hear her.

  “I mean, just because I haven’t got . . . stunt puffins.”

  The bell tinged and Huckle wandered in, wondering if Polly would be free to have lunch with him, a hope that faded as soon as he saw her face. Neil was with him; since Huckle had let the fire go out, he’d thought he might as well go for a bit of a hop. When the little bird saw Polly, he eeped loudly and marched over to the counter, where he fluttered up in stages—he was getting rather too lazy and fat to fly—until he made it on to her shoulder, whereupon he leaned into her hair affectionately until she gave in and absent-mindedly rubbed him behind the ears.

  “Yes!” said Bernard. “Like that! That’s exactly what I need! How did you train him to do that?”

  “I didn’t,” said Polly, surprised. “He just did it.”

  Without thinking about it, she passed Neil a crumb of brioche that had fallen into her apron pocket. He chomped it up cheerfully and leaned against her hair again.

  “There you go,” said Bernard. “But how are we going to train up all those puffins?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  He turned his blue gaze on her.

  “You don’t want the puffin sanctuary to close, do you?” he said.

  “Of course not,” said Polly.

  “I mean, it would be the end, probably, of puffins in Cornwall.”

  “That would be . . . that would be awful,” said Polly, meaning it.

  “We need a star attraction.”

  “NO WAY,” said Polly.

  “That’s it!” said Huckle. “That’s what you have to start saying to people! Say it again!”

  Polly barely glanced at him.

  “I mean, he could turn things around,” said Bernard weakly.

  “You’re not having him,” said Polly in a warning voice. “Don’t even think about it.”

  Neil eeped and edged closer to her hair.

  “C’mon, Polly, shall we take Neil out of here?” said Huckle.

  “Yeah,” said Selina. “I can stay and look after Bernard. It’s no trouble.”

  “Jayden will be back in a minute,” said Polly.

  As she passed Bernard, she looked at him grimly.

  “You can’t have him,” she said again.

  As if things couldn’t get any worse, Jayden arrived just as she was on the point of leaving. He was blushing all the way down to his moustache.

  “Um,” he said. “Can I have a word?”

  Polly looked at him.

  “Of course.”

  He rubbed the back of his neck.

  “Um, I wanted to ask . . . Can I have a raise?”

  Polly blinked. Both of them took the absolute minimum out of the bakery. She was planning on raising prices a little during the summer; the holidaymakers who came over from the mainland had plenty of money and were inclined to spend it, and people who had tasted her delicious fresh offerings had assured her repeatedly that her wares would fetch much higher prices in London or Brighton or Cardiff.

  The problem was that the local people were on fixed incomes or pensions or low wages—like the fishermen, who worked harder than anyone she had ever met and still found time to pull shifts for the RNLI. She couldn’t have a two-tier pricing structure; it was against the law. And she absolutely wouldn’t compromise on the 00 flour, or using local butter in the croissants and cakes. You got out what you put in, and Polly only put in the absolute best.

  But it meant there was very little left over.

  “Oh Jayden,” she said in disappointment.

  Jayden nodded. “I know, I know,” he said. When he’d started at the bakery, the wages had been more than he got for fishing, in much more agreeable conditions.

  “What’s changed?” Polly asked.

  Jayden blushed even redder, if that were possible.

  “Um,” he said. “It’s just . . . Flora finishes college soon . . . And I thought. I thought I might put a ring on it.”

  He mumbled this last bit, as if embarrassed to say it out loud even just to Polly, whose eyebrows shot up.

  “Oh my God! Jayden! But she’s only twenty-one! And you’re only twenty-three!”

  Jayden looked confused at that.

  “Happen,” he said. “That’s older than my parents when they got married. And Archie too.”

  Polly reflected on the tired-looking captain of the Trochilus, whose three young children made him look considerably older than his years.

  “I suppose so,” she said. “But Jayden . . . You see what we take through the till every day.”

  Jayden nodded.

  “I know. I just . . . I wondered. Because Flora will be getting a job, you know, and I thought . . . I thought it might be time we settled down.”

  “Are you going to stay here?” said Polly.

  “I’d like to, aye,” said Jayden. “But we’ll see. Getting a place to live . . .”

  Polly nodded. She understood completely. Jayden lived with his mum still, but of course he’d want to find a place of his own one day.

  She had the oddest sense that everyone else seemed to be happily moving along with their lives, whereas she felt like she didn’t want to move at all; that she was being carried forward against her will. She knew why on one level. But it didn’t help her to feel much better.

  “I just can’t,” she said. “Not at the moment. Can we see if w
e have a good summer? Flora can run the other shop and we’ll get the van open for ice cream and see how we do.”

  Jayden shrugged.

  “Sure,” he said, and deftly started clearing up the crumbs in the back kitchen, returning the room to pristine perfection. He was a brilliant member of staff. If Polly could, she’d have given him his raise and then some. She felt like a bad boss; like a mean person. The fact that Jayden wasn’t even complaining made her feel even worse.

  Polly was so frustrated by the time Huckle got her out of there that he frogmarched her down to the Red Lion and ordered her a hot toddy. There was a roaring fire in the grate and a few fishermen on night shift sitting sleepily beside it playing dominoes. There wasn’t a jukebox in the pub, as most of the locals liked to sing a song or two after a night out, which meant the only sound was the ticking of the large ship’s clock over the mantelpiece thick with local holly, and the occasional snuffling noises from Garbo, the pub’s gigantic shaggy lurcher, who lived rather magnificently on a diet of fish and chips and the occasional spilled beer. He was less dog, more pony on the whole. That lunchtime he was stretched out in front of the fire, his paws twitching as he chased rabbits—or, more likely given the size of him, gazelles—across imaginary plains.

  “What’s up?” said Huckle.

  “Oh God,” said Polly. “I’m so, so sorry. Everything’s kind of gone . . . gone absolutely rubbish.”

  She looked up at him and began to tell him about her day. Huckle tried to remember a time in his life when all that was important was whether the queen bee was fertilizing the hive properly and whether he had enough boiled jars in stock.

  “That’s terrible, sweetie,” he said when she’d finished.

  “Do you think Reuben would fund the puffin sanctuary?”