The Cafe by the Sea

by Jenny Colgan

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Well, it just about fits,” said Mrs. Kennedy doubtfully.

  Flora wasn’t so sure. But everything else was ready. Great jugs of the evening-churned cream, foamy and yellow in the plain earthenware pottery, had been delivered to go with the pies, which would be cut up and served later by the giggling local girls the hotel had recruited to help out. She hadn’t seen Fintan, assumed he was loitering outside the kitchen with the big-boy caterers. Obviously no expense had been spared; she’d seen Kelvin the fisherman and his boys deliver huge amounts of locally sourced langoustines and raised her eyebrows.

  “I know,” said Kelvin. “I wish he’d asked us before. How much money does he have, anyway?”

  “All of it, I think,” said Flora.

  She’d had a quick shower back at the farmhouse, then headed out for the Rock, which was a hive of people setting things up and rushing about busily. She went to the room that had been set aside for performers and looked at her old costume. She’d already brushed the kilt and washed the shirt, bodice, and socks. The shoes she’d had to borrow; her own were so soft and used they were falling apart. Dancers’ shoes weren’t designed to last.

  She had always loved this pale green tartan. Most of the girls liked the big brash colors that made you stand out: the vibrant blues and reds and purples that drew the eye as you all flew together. But this subtle pale color with the forest-green bodice was one of the few things she’d ever worn that emphasized her pale eyes rather than making them disappear.

  “Have you practiced?” said Mrs. Kennedy.

  In fact, she had run through the dances a few times—in private, in case the boys teased her. She didn’t have the height she’d once had on the jumps, but as soon as the music had started up again, her muscle memory had kicked in and she’d remembered the steps immediately.

  Iona and Isla arrived, giggling when they saw Flora—whom they thought of as grown-up, and very glamorous for living in London—fully dressed in the regalia.

  “What’s London like?” asked Isla timidly as they laced up their shoes. “Is it busy and full of robbers and that?”

  “Yes,” said Flora. “But it’s still . . . it’s good.”

  In fact, she found it difficult to remember, at this distance, exactly what it was like, in the same way you can’t remember what it’s like to be cold when you’re hot, and vice versa. Her brain just seemed to eradicate anything that wasn’t the simple experience of being back on the island.

  “There’s loads of bars and places to go and things going on, and the buildings just go on forever, and people come from all over the world, not just like summer here, but really from everywhere. Albania and West Africa and Portugal and everywhere you’ve ever heard of.”

  “Have you ever seen anybody famous?”

  Flora smiled.

  “I saw Graham Norton on the street. Does that count?”

  They thought about it and decided that it did.

  “So are you all leaving again after the summer?” said Flora. They shrugged. What else was there to do? Most of them would be going, to Inverness, or Oban, or Aberdeen, or Glasgow, or farther. Even though some people did move to the islands, they were different: English eccentrics who thought they’d find a purer way of life up here (this provoked many an eye roll); Canadians in search of their roots; retired people. Not really the lifeblood of a community. Not these young girls with their fresh, blooming skin and flashing eyes, warming up and stretching their long pale limbs.

  They were in a back room at the Rock, a place that was meant, Flora assumed, to house functions or weddings one day. It was a beautiful room, filled with oil paintings and pale tartan wallpaper; a massive fire was lit, and comfortable sofas were dotted around. Everything gave off an air of luxury and ease and comfort, but once again those huge picture windows opened on to extraordinary empty views; in this case toward the rocks behind the resort, where pining gulls and eagles dipped and soared in the beams of the endless light.

  The girls were clustered around the doors, though, watching everyone arrive as seven o’clock came round.

  Mure done up for a night out was quite an amusing sight, women accustomed to spending the entire year in Wellingtons or thick fur-lined boots for the unforgiving winter trying out pastel dresses and high-heeled shoes in exotic colors. Thankfully the rain had stayed away. There was no sun, but the sky was palest blue and white and gray, one of those evenings where the sky shaded into the sea, which shaded into the land, with no difference between them.

  The braziers at the doorway had been lit again, and Bertie had been given reinforcements; the much larger boat was out tonight, ferrying people back and forth, dropping off excited pink-faced groups, some already clearly refreshed in anticipation. A piper greeted them, playing a classic lament rather than anything too rousing. The younger dancing girls peered out as the local boys disembarked.

  “Ooh look, there’s Ruaridh MacLeod,” whispered Iona, and they all laughed rather desperately as a handsome blond boy marched up the steps, laughing with his fellows and pretending that his mother hadn’t arrived on the same boat, and then checked their hair. Yet again Flora’s wouldn’t behave, and she was sad to see that the rest of the girls had immaculate, huge, lustrous buns—which they’d clearly bought.

  She enjoyed the laughter, but it also made her wince, rather. Oh, the depths of a teenage girl’s crush. And having something so very similar . . . Well. It was not edifying at her age.

  She looked around for Joel, but he hadn’t arrived yet. She would have to change after the dancing. She’d brought her prettiest dress; she could put it on later, take off her ridiculous kilt. She tried to picture him wearing his. If he did. Well. That would be a sign.

  Lorna dashed up. She looked fabulous in a dark green dress that showed off her lovely auburn hair.

  “Damn,” said Flora. “This is very annoying. Couldn’t you also have dressed as a teenager?”

  “Are you wearing socks?!”

  “Shut up!”

  Lorna grabbed a glass of champagne and raised her eyebrows meaningfully.

  “I can’t,” said Flora. “I might fall off the stage and tell everyone not to vote for Colton.”

  “Do you get paid really, really well?” said Lorna.

  “I’m beginning to think not nearly enough.”

  “Your hair’s falling out.”

  “I know, I know, shut up.”

  Suddenly there was Colton, glad-handing every new arrival, introducing himself, bidding them all welcome. He caught Flora’s eye and grinned broadly, coming over.

  “Look at you!” he said in delight. “Now this is what I call going above and beyond in a law firm.”

  “Don’t you start,” she said. This was so far away from the sophisticated London person she liked to project. And closer, she knew, to who she really was.

  “No, I mean it! You look wonderful!”

  “You do,” said Lorna, kissing her cheek and vanishing into the throng.

  Flora stretched her leg behind her.

  “I hope I’m not too rusty.”

  “Have a dram before you start. You’re on pretty early; you can have plenty more afterward.”

  She smiled.

  “Mrs. Kennedy would actually kill me. Actually kill me dead.”

  Colton smiled.

  “Well, this is my house. I’d hate to not offer traditional hospitality.”

  Flora drew back enough to get a proper look at his outfit. She almost burst out laughing but managed to hide her mouth just in time.

  “What?”

  “Nothing,” she said.

  His eyes narrowed and Flora tried to remind herself that he was still a very, very mega-rich client.

  “You don’t like it?”

  Colton was wearing the entire regalia of a clan chief—and then some: a full Highland dress kilt in bright red-and-green tartan, with a long frock coat, a huge hairy sporran, a massive dagger stuck in his cream sock, an embroidered tartan
vest, a bow tie, a sash in the same tartan across his broad chest, and, perched on top of his cropped hair, a massive tartan bunnet with three grouse feathers sticking out of the top.

  “Is there a Rogers clan?”

  “My mother was as Scottish as you,” said Colton. “A Frink, she was.”

  Flora blinked rapidly.

  “Well,” she said. “You look very nice.”

  Colton beamed.

  “Thank you.”

  The piper began to slow down as a fiddler joined him and the music weaved itself among the gloaming evening. Mrs. Kennedy appeared and coughed loudly.

  “Is that your cue?” said Colton.

  “Looks like it,” said Flora.

  “Where’s your brother?”

  “He’s out back helping set up. He’s very nervous.”

  Colton smiled.

  “I think he’ll . . . I think he’ll do well, don’t you?”

  Flora nodded.

  “I don’t think he’s cut out to be a farmer.”

  “I agree,” said Colton.

  “AHEM!”

  Outside the building, on the lawn leading down to the sea, a small stage had been erected, surrounded by more braziers. It could be better, Flora thought, but it could be worse. She could see it being used for weddings when the weather was nice enough.

  Gathered around it, she thought, was all of Mure. Old teachers, old friends who’d stayed, old friends who’d left and were visiting. The butcher, the postwoman, the milkman, the boys from the farmers’ club, and the old men from the bowling. The Norse festival committee and the Fair Isle knitters, who took work on when that island was too busy. She recognized them all, and even the ones she didn’t know personally she saw the faces repeated, saw pale green eyes like hers. All of them looking at her, judging her for going away.

  And the face that wasn’t there. Suddenly Flora thought she was going to cry. To collapse, to not be able to dance at all. Her mother had never missed one of her performances—even if, she realized now, it meant leaving the boys alone, leaving Fintan stuck behind doing something—who even knew what? Playing shinty when he didn’t want to? Forced to sink or swim with the bigger boys?

  She felt a pang of guilt, followed by an even bigger flash of sadness for the gap in the crowd. Oh God, she missed her mum so much. Even though she’d thought that dancing was embarrassing and stupid and pointless when she was a teenager, she’d known, always, how much it had pleased her mother that she did it; that she was good at it, won competitions and rosettes and cups, none of which she’d even glanced at, simply left behind to gather dust in the bedroom she had never thought of.

  She blinked back the tears.

  “You okay?” came a voice. She turned round to see Charlie at her elbow. He was wearing a simple outfit—a loose shirt with leather lacing, a muted hunting tartan rather than a formal one. He looked like a man who was born to wear it, which of course he was.

  “Oh yes, I’m fine,” she said. “Hi.”

  “You look worried.”

  She frowned.

  “Do you go around telling people to cheer up, it’ll never happen?”

  “Oh,” said Charlie, his normal laid-back composure disturbed. “No. Not usually.”

  “Sorry,” said Flora, wiping her eyes quickly. “I was just . . . lost in thought.”

  “Okay,” said Charlie. He paused. “Are you missing your mum?”

  She glanced up at him, struck by the gentle kindness of his words, just as the pipes skirled up into “The Bonnie Wife of Fairlie”, and she was borne along on the tide with the other girls, streaming out past the smoke and the crowds, and completely caught up.

  Flora realized she’d forgotten, over the last years of being a comfortable student, then a commuting office drone, how much she’d lost. She’d forgotten how much she loved to dance, especially to live music, which moved in and out of her every pore. She fell completely into it, lost herself to the intricate trails of the sword dance as they jumped and kicked in perfect synchronization, her head whipping past long after the rest of her body had moved; her hair, as ever, starting to fall out of its bun, the pale color reflected in the firelight as the crowd clapped and whistled, and the girls moved, faster and faster, in and out of each other, never stopping, as the music sped up and the flames leaped higher; and Joel, who had arrived late, feeling unusually out of place, mounted the steps from the soft gray lapping water, herons taking off on his approach, and stood at the lit-up entrance of the garden just in time to see her.

  She turned her head then, although she wasn’t looking at him, her pale skin reflecting in the firelight, in the happy faces of the onlookers, deep in concentration in the middle of a step, and then she was gone, twirled back into the dance, leaving just an impression of herself behind, her now loose hair darting behind her, and Joel caught himself. And realized. And cursed profoundly.

  Because he couldn’t understand how he had never noticed this bewitching girl before, this strange foreign creature; and he was utterly annoyed at recognizing something he now realized he’d known for a while, and his fist curled slightly in irritation.

  He didn’t want to . . . Well. For starters, she wasn’t remotely his type. His type very rarely wore kilts and danced through a night that wasn’t dark, on an island that wasn’t anything like or anywhere near any place he’d ever been before, a place moreover that felt itself practically like a dream, with its crags, and birds, and endless seas and ageless people who looked at you from the depths of knowing where they were rooted and where they belonged and always had.

  This wasn’t for him. This wasn’t what he wanted. He couldn’t risk everything. Everything he’d fought so hard for, every piece of armor he’d built around himself.

  The music skirled faster and faster, the clapping louder and louder.

  Joel was not a man given to introspection. He had never found it remotely helpful in his circumstances. And he didn’t want to do it now. It was self-preservation. And it was important. He couldn’t . . . He’d managed for over three decades on his own. He thought about what Dr. Philippoussis would say. “There’s more to life than work.”

  And Joel would counter with all the men he knew—and they were mostly men—who did nothing else; who did get married but left their families miserable and lonely to dedicate themselves to the constant distraction work bestowed.

  He needed that. It had saved him. Families and personal relationships could not save him. Not in his experience.

  He blinked and vowed to find some cute barmaid, someone, something to distract him.

  He looked up again, just as she twirled round and saw him, suddenly, for the first time, and her color peaked as she caught his eye and, completely involuntarily, a huge smile spread across his face, and for once in his life, he found he had lost his cool completely.

  Joel couldn’t remember the last time he hadn’t been on his phone making a deal, or chasing a client, or taking a meeting, or chatting up a hot girl in a bar just to prove to himself that he could, or pushing himself beyond his limit at a triathlon . . .

  And now here he was, doing none of those things: just standing, watching a girl dance, on the northernmost tip of the world. He felt as if he were moving in a dream; in a different world from anything he had ever known, as the past that he never dwelled on came to him in fragments: gliding effortlessly from bullied junior to superior senior at his fancy boarding school, scooping up awards and scholarships as he went; channeling his loneliness and frustration into grasping for everything, in a way that his profession and adopted cities absolutely encouraged.

  And as he’d grown older, filled out, the fierce sports training that honed his body into something women couldn’t resist; his ever-growing wealth—he hired someone to find him an apartment and furnish it; the moves to New York, Hong Kong, and now London, but never staying long enough to do more than make more money, hang out with the other associates, let the women come and, ideally quite quickly, go.

  And they wo
uld shout and scream and cry and tell him he was heartless and soulless and empty, everything people already thought about lawyers, making it an easy profession for him to fall into. As if he didn’t know.

  And yet now here he was, out in the middle of . . . God knows where. And there was a girl twirling and flickering in the firelight, and he couldn’t take his eyes off her, and he was still smiling, he realized—not a lawyer’s smile, not a give-me-your-money smile, not a shit-eating grin, not a flirtatious come-on to a wannabe model.

  This was a smile that he absolutely, simply couldn’t help; and she held his gaze even as she twined through the web of other dancers, each of them moving so fleetly it seemed impossible they wouldn’t bump into each other as the music came faster and faster, so strange sounding to him, and they were practically a jumping, laughing blur; and he closed his eyes briefly and rubbed the bridge of his nose, because something strange was happening to him and he didn’t know what it was, and it scared him worse than anything ever had, and he wished he hadn’t come.

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Flora was genuinely surprised at the huge gale of applause that greeted the Mrs. Kennedy Highland Dancers as they ended the dance and with hands on their hips made a low bow. It rolled over them like a wave, and she glanced around those faces that she had found so judging, so hostile before.

  Well, now they just looked like faces. Like home. Like people she knew, had always known. She felt a little teary but didn’t want to go over the top, as the girls held hands and bowed once more. Then the full band came on to clear the way for a ceilidh, and she ran back inside to change. She had smiled at seeing Joel, realizing that he hadn’t given in to her teasing and capitulated to wearing a kilt. He was wearing a slightly darker suit; she guessed that was about his limit. It was a message. A sign to her, a reminder that he was slightly apart.

  He had, though—and she realized she’d just seen it for the first time—a beautiful smile.

  Charlie came up to her on the way in.

  “That was . . . that was lovely,” he said, looking rather pink.