The Daisy Picker

by Roisin Meaney

  She asks Angela about him. ‘Oh, that’s Dominic – wasn’t he here the night you arrived? He’s a regular, comes in for his dinner about once a week. Lives by himself – I don’t think he was ever married – in that gorgeous little stone house that’s practically on the beach. You must have passed it in your wanderings – it’s on the road down from the square, on its own, dark-blue door. I’ve got two of his paintings in the restaurant, actually; you might have noticed them. He always paints the sea – says it’s different every time he looks at it.’

  Angela says that Dominic’s work is on display in a few galleries and craft shops around the county, and until a few years ago he sold mainly to tourists over the summer months. ‘Then one day – I suppose it’d be about five or six years ago now – he got a call from some gallery owner in the States, whose sister or wife or something had bought one of Dominic’s paintings when she was over here on holidays. They made some deal together, and now a lot of Dominic’s stuff goes straight over there. I’d say he’s not short of a few bob, and I’m very glad we bought our two when we did – they’d probably cost a bomb now.’

  Lizzie goes into the restaurant the next day to look at the paintings. She’s struck by the way he’s captured the power of the Atlantic – looking at the turquoises and greens and blue-whites and greys colliding on the canvas, she can almost feel the spray. She can understand how someone from a desert-y place like Arizona might be drawn to paintings like these. They’d hang them on white walls in hot dry rooms, and look at them and hear the rush of the waves and smell the salt.

  She looks at the little clown on the mantelpiece again. There seem to be quite a few talented folk in Merway. Maybe it’s catching – she might be composing symphonies before the year is out.

  When Lizzie drops into Merway’s only laundrette with her bundle of washing, she gets to know Rory and Aisling, the owners. Aisling tells Lizzie one day that, given the choice, Rory would much rather be out fishing than handing out change at the laundrette or looking after their two small children. ‘I suppose I’m what’s known as a fishing widow – he’s never here when I want him. Although he does bring home the dinner most times, so I forgive him.’

  Rory grins and confesses that it’s all true. ‘Any time you fancy getting up at half past four and joining me, Lizzie, you’re welcome. I’ll make sure you bring Angela home a few mackerel.’ Lizzie laughs and tells him not to hold his breath.

  She’s tasted some of Rory’s catches. Angela buys anything he doesn’t keep for himself, and adds it to that evening’s menu as a special. Her fisherman’s pie is in big demand when it appears, brimming with chunks of fish and vegetables and hard-boiled eggs, and smothered in a rich creamy sauce topped with bubbling melted cheese. Mammy rarely cooks fish – Daddy isn’t gone on it – and when she does, it’s steamed and served with soft cauliflower, or mashed carrots and parsnips, and no sauce. No wonder Daddy isn’t too keen. Lizzie is willing to bet that he’d go mad for a big helping of fisherman’s pie.

  She’s started to experiment with food Mammy never heard of – bean sprouts, pine nuts, fresh ginger, water chestnuts. She tosses them all with strips of beef or chicken in a wok she picked up in Seapoint, and adds a few chunks of pineapple to liven things up. (She tries to imagine Mammy putting pineapple into anything except a bowl of custard, and fails.) When she’s sick of stir-fries she bakes a spud in the teeny oven and fills it with whatever takes her fancy – sour cream with a few of Angela’s chives, fried onions and grated cheddar, a spoonful of prawns, a dollop of baked beans. Or she beats up a couple of eggs, adds a bit of chopped ham and onion and tomato and mushrooms, and fries it. She loves the haphazardness of it all; there’s no routine, no set time to eat, no special dishes for certain days. Mammy would have a canary.

  She can’t believe all the foods she’s never tasted before – avocados, salsa, mangetout, feta cheese, sun-dried tomatoes, mango chutney and black bean sauce, capers and pilchards and monkfish. And whenever she uses herbs, they’re fresh; Angela is adamant about that. ‘Don’t let me catch you with any of that dried rubbish.’ She gives Lizzie two little pots, one of basil, one of mint. ‘To get you going; you can start your own off later.’

  And every night, in a small act of rebellion, Lizzie has a glass or two of wine with her dinner.

  Another local she’s come across on her travels is Maggie Delaney, the middle-aged widow who owns Blooming Miracles, Merway’s small but well-stocked garden centre. Maggie is barely five feet tall but for some reason everyone around Merway calls her Big Maggie.

  Angela has told Lizzie that Tom Delaney, eight years older than Maggie, dropped dead of a massive heart attack three years to the day after walking her down the aisle. ‘They were having dinner in the hotel to celebrate their anniversary, and Tom was dead before they got to the main course; just dropped like a stone into his soup, the creature.’ He was thirty-nine; Maggie never remarried.

  Lizzie often goes into Blooming Miracles; she loves fresh flowers, and keeps the caravan well stocked. She adores the moist, scented air that rushes to meet her as soon as she opens the door and steps down into the shop, past the pot plants and seed-packets and buckets of whatever flowers are on sale. She watches Maggie’s hands wrapping her selection in pale-blue tissue paper.

  ‘You must love being in this atmosphere, Maggie, surrounded by gorgeous scents all day.’

  Big Maggie looks up from the flowers. ‘Oh, indeed I do, Lizzie; I couldn’t live without my greenery. I’d just curl up and die if I was hemmed in by brick walls and nothing growing.’

  Angela has warned Lizzie not to be too chatty in Blooming Miracles. ‘If you think I’m a gossip, you ain’t heard nothing yet. Anything you say to Maggie will be all over Merway in the morning, you can be sure. Just watch what you tell her.’

  So Lizzie answers all Maggie’s questions cautiously – she’s not sure how long she’ll be around, really; no, it was nothing major that made her move here, just looking for a change; no, she didn’t know anyone here before she came; yes, the B&B is very cosy altogether, lovely. Yes, she’ll probably look around for a job if she decides to stay.

  She doesn’t mention the caravan to Big Maggie, although she doesn’t imagine that it’ll stay a secret for long in Merway. Someone is bound to see her coming and going from it at some stage.

  She meets Nuala and Ríodhna, the farming sisters who deliver their organic produce to Angela and to Ripe, the fruit-and-veg shop with the gorgeous carving over the door. They always have time for a few words as they unload their deliveries.

  ‘Where did you get that lovely scarf, Lizzie? . . . Ah no, don’t tell me that came from a charity shop, I can’t believe it; you have such an eye for these things . . . Ríodhna, look at Lizzie’s scarf – isn’t it just like the one you were raving about in that place in Seapoint the other day? You won’t believe what Lizzie paid for it. Go on, guess – you won’t believe it. You’ll be sick when you hear.’

  On the Tuesday of her second week in Merway, Lizzie opens the door of Ripe. A man comes out from the back and smiles at her. ‘Hello.’

  ‘Hi – I’m looking for lemons.’ She’s decided to go for it and try making a lemon tart in the caravan. Might as well see what that oven is capable of. Mind you, if she’s planning to bake for a living she’ll need one a lot bigger. She might have to have a little word with Angela about using her kitchen when it’s free. It’s either that or move somewhere else; and the longer she lives in the caravan, the more she loves it. Surely they’ll be able to come to some arrangement – Angela is so easy-going about everything else.

  ‘Lemons – just over there.’ His eyes are very blue; vivid, you’d call them. Nice smile, too. There’s no one else in the shop, and Lizzie feels she should say something as she puts a few lemons into a bag.

  She thinks of the name over the door; that’ll do. ‘I love the sign outside, by the way – the carving is fantastic.’

  He looks over at her, eyebrows raised. ‘You have good taste. T
hat was made by a very skilled craftsman. Lives near here, in fact.’

  She nods. ‘Yes, I’ve seen more of his work – a little clown, and a cook; at least, I’m assuming they were all done by the same person.’

  He looks thoughtfully at her. ‘A clown and a cook – now where would they be?’ Then his face clears. ‘Ah, you mean the ones in Angela’s house.’

  ‘Yes.’ She’s surprised; how could he have known about the cook? The clown, maybe – it’s in the restaurant for all to see; but the other one is in the kitchen, where no one goes except the overnight guests. And, presumably, friends of Angela’s.

  She glances at him again. He’s a good-looking man, a bit older than her; early fifties, she’d say. Dark hair, almost black, cut very short; jeans and a faded green shirt. No wedding ring. Maybe he has breakfast in Angela’s kitchen now and again . . .

  Lizzie remembers something. ‘He has a shop around here, hasn’t he? The woodcarver, I mean.’

  He pauses, her change in his hand. ‘Well, yes and no . . . Tell you what, keep an eye out as you walk around the shops – you’ll find a few surprises in the windows.’ Then he hands her her change. ‘Thanks; see you again. You’re staying at Angela’s, I believe.’

  She looks at him in surprise again, and he grins. ‘Maggie was talking.’

  She walks out, bemused. So this is what living in a village is like. And what did he mean, ‘Yes and no,’ when she asked him about the woodworker having a shop? Either he has or he hasn’t. And what was all that about surprises in the shop windows?

  As she leaves Ripe, she comes face to face with the scruffy young man who was in the pub at lunchtime the other day. She holds the door open for him and he walks through without thanks, leaving a smell of stale cigarettes behind him. Charming.

  It doesn’t take her long to find the surprises. In the corner of practically every shop window is a little carving: a Cinderella slipper in the shoe shop, a chubby piglet in the butcher’s, a pair of scissors in the hairdresser’s, a bunch of grapes in the off-licence. They’re small enough to miss unless you’re looking for them, but each one is carved with the same delicacy and talent as the clown and the cook.

  Lizzie feels curious about this woodcarver leaving his mark all over the place. She wonders when she’ll finally get to see him, and where his shop is hiding.

  Not everyone in Merway is friendly. Occasionally Lizzie comes across a bored shop assistant who barely looks at her – and Angela has told her to watch out for Gráinne in the newsagent’s. ‘Odd as two left feet – a cousin or something of Brian, who owns it. But she’d pick a fight with Nelson Mandela if he had the misfortune to wander in – give out to him for divorcing Winnie or something. My advice: grab your paper and don’t hang around, or she’ll find something to moan about.’

  On the whole, though, Lizzie decides that she’s made a good choice in Merway. It isn’t really too small, even if word does travel fast. She likes the idea of being a stone’s throw from everything. The pebbly beach at the bottom of the garden – fourteen paces from the caravan door – is a huge bonus. And she’s only seven or eight miles from Seapoint, which is almost as big as Kilmorris.

  After just a couple of weeks here, she’s getting to know people and settling in. The caravan is just grand, plenty big enough for her and Jones, and cosy with the gas fire on. The picture on her telly is a bit snowy – Angela says it’s probably because she’s so near the sea – but she doesn’t watch it half as much as she did at home, anyway. Angela and Deirdre are lovely to have around. And, after a shaky start, Dumbledore and Jones are slowly learning to tolerate each other.

  On Sunday evening, the end of her second week in Merway, Lizzie decides that she’s settled in enough to move on with her plan. She knocks on the kitchen door; the restaurant is closed on Sundays, so hopefully Angela won’t be busy. She needs someone to run her ideas by.

  ‘Come in.’ Angela is sitting at the table, a cookbook propped open in front of her. She’s wearing glasses that Lizzie hasn’t seen before. ‘Hi there; plug in the kettle, would you? I’m just planning the dinners for next week.’

  Angela is a comfort-food fanatic. She’s told Lizzie that she tries to create meals that make people happy. ‘I don’t mean eating as a substitute for love, or any nonsense like that; but when you have a meal that you really enjoy, it should leave a sort of glow behind. That’s always my aim when I cook, especially with this winter menu – all creamy and slobbery.’

  Now Lizzie looks over her shoulder, and Angela points at a recipe for a mushroom stroganoff. ‘This’ll be my veggie one, I think. It’s so creamy and yummy, and it’s served with rice, which means that one of my other dishes will probably be a curry.’

  ‘Mmm.’ Lizzie’s mouth waters at the thought of a spicy beef curry; Mammy was deeply suspicious of anything foreign. ‘I’ll have to come up and sample those.’ She goes over to the singing kettle and scalds the teapot. ‘Angela, I want your advice.’

  ‘Hmmm?’ Angela is thumbing through another book, flicking the pages rapidly. ‘Curry, curry . . . What’s on your mind?’

  Lizzie fills the pot and brings it over to the table, then gets two cups and the milk. She sits opposite Angela and puts her hands in front of her on the table. ‘I’m going to start looking for a job.’

  Angela looks up from her book and peers over her glasses at Lizzie. ‘Good. What kind of a job?’

  ‘Well, remember I said I’d love to be a baker? I thought I’d start with – Furlong’s, is it? the bakery here in Merway – and ask them if they need any help; and if they don’t, which they probably won’t, I could go into Seapoint. What do you think?’

  Angela takes off her glasses and closes the book. ‘Hold on a minute. You’re serious about baking for a living?’

  Lizzie looks at her in surprise; she thought she made that clear the other day. ‘Yes, dead serious. It’s what I’ve always wanted.’

  ‘And you’re going to look for a job here in Merway.’

  ‘Well, I thought I’d start here, yeah.’ Is Angela giving her a funny look?

  ‘In Furlong’s.’

  ‘Yes . . .’ Something is definitely up. Angela is staring across the table at her so intently that Lizzie feels uncomfortable.

  Then Angela picks up the teapot and pours. ‘Tell me this. Are you any good at baking? Honestly now.’

  It’s so unexpected that Lizzie nearly laughs. She turns her palms up and makes an embarrassed face. ‘Well, I think I’m quite good . . . Everyone seems to like what I bake, and I’ve been at it for years, since I was eight or nine. I’ve made Christmas cakes forever, and I’ve tried loads of different breads, and umpteen kinds of pastry –’

  Angela picks up the milk and adds a drop to her tea. ‘Well, you can forget about going to Furlong’s.’

  Lizzie nods; at least Angela is starting to make sense. ‘Right; I didn’t really think they’d have work, in such a small place –’

  ‘No; I mean, forget about trying to get a baking job anywhere around here, Lizzie.’ Angela looks calmly across the table at her.

  Lizzie feels her heart plummet to her boots. ‘What are you saying? You don’t think there’s anywhere around here that could take me on?’ She doesn’t think she can bear to see her dream disappear for the second time. ‘Not even in Seapoint? The woman in Furlong’s told me –’

  ‘Oh, no, I’m not saying that at all.’ A tiny smile is starting at the corner of Angela’s mouth. ‘In fact, I know exactly where you can get a job – starting tomorrow, if you like.’

  ‘What?’ Lizzie’s jaw drops a mile; her heart does another lurch. ‘Angela, you’re not making sense. Tell me quickly what you mean; you’ve me totally addled.’

  The smile blooms on Angela’s face. ‘Right here, you goose. In this very restaurant. You’ve just been interviewed, and you’ve passed – subject to your stuff being edible, of course.’

  ‘What?’ Still Lizzie is bewildered. ‘But you’re a great baker – your scones in the morning, a
nd all those desserts you serve up –’

  Angela sighs. ‘Time to come clean.’ She looks over at Lizzie. ‘I can’t bake to save my life. Honest to God.’

  Lizzie shakes her head, smiling. ‘Angela, that’s so not true, and you know it – don’t you feed half of Merway every night?’

  ‘I do, yes.’ Angela nods in agreement. ‘I give them a good home-cooked dinner, not too dear. And then I offer them apple tart that’s made with frozen pastry, or lemon meringue pie that comes out of a packet. I buy the meringue cases for the baked Alaska. Lucy Furlong supplies any cakes I need. And look – you may as well know the whole awful truth . . .’ She gets up and goes to one of the presses. ‘Those lovely breakfast scones?’ She holds up a packet of scone mix. ‘Mr Odlum helps me out there.’

  She comes back to the table and sits down. ‘Think, Lizzie – have you seen me produce a cake out of that oven since you arrived? Or have you eaten a slice of bread in this kitchen that wasn’t wrapped in waxed paper?’ She shrugs. ‘No matter what I do, my bread weighs a ton. My madeira cake takes one look at me and sinks. I have never in my life got dough to rise.’ She grins across at Lizzie. ‘I’m a disaster when it comes to baking – it was the one thing I failed miserably at when I was training to be a chef.’

  Lizzie remembers wishing for a hunk of bread to mop up the shepherd’s-pie sauce on her first night in Merway. And she’d given up desserts, so she couldn’t judge them. ‘Well, now that you mention it –’

  Angela spreads her hands out, palms up. ‘See? And then you come along, and you can bake, and you want to feck off to Furlong’s. There’s gratitude to me for putting a roof over your head.’

  Lizzie smiles. ‘And do you mean it about me working here with you?’

  ‘Do I what? I can cook, and you can bake.’ She lifts her cup. ‘Are we a match made in heaven, or what?’