Summer at Little Beach Street Bakery

by Jenny Colgan

  Malcolm grunted. Polly stepped backwards and just nodded dumbly. She caught hold of the side of the table.

  ‘So you’re moving to Mount Polbearne?’ she said, trying to keep her voice light and pleasant. Malcolm rolled his eyes.

  ‘Well, I’ll be in and out, yeah. Till I get things shipshape, know what I mean? No more slacking, huh? But I’m pretty busy. And I don’t want to get buried alive in this hole.’

  This seemed an awkward thing to say at his aunt’s funeral, but Polly didn’t mention it.

  ‘So are you leaving a job to come, or…’

  Malcolm looked bullish.

  ‘Uh, no, I’m kind of between things right now. I’m like a consultant? On lots of different stuff?’

  ‘Okay,’ said Polly. But she didn’t feel like it was okay at all.

  The old bell that still hung precariously in the ruined tower at the top of Mount Polbearne began to toll solemnly, and the fishermen doffed their caps as they left the building and followed the coffin. A hearse couldn’t fit through the narrow winding streets, so the coffin was carried by Janet’s two sons, Archie, Jayden, Huckle and Patrick. Once again, Tarnie was conspicuous by his absence. No one at this funeral was not thinking of the last time they’d been together when somebody had died.

  There was a glowering sky outside; it wasn’t raining, but it was certainly threatening it. A few disconsolate day trippers at the harbour wall were looking about confused, unsure as to why everything was closed up. The entire town trudged slowly up round the winding cobbles, heads down against the wind, which whipped high this close to the sea and this far off the ground. Polly wished she had Huckle’s hand to hold, or that her best friend Kerensa was back from whichever ridiculous holiday she was taking right now, but no such luck. She stayed close to Muriel, who ran the village shop.

  ‘This is awful,’ Muriel was saying. Her baby, Marina, popped her head out of her sling and looked around with a worried expression on her face. ‘I know. It’s okay, baby. She should be having her morning nap in the storeroom,’ she confided. ‘She can only get to sleep to the smell of cumin and aniseed.’

  ‘Is there anything you don’t stock?’ said Polly. ‘Apart from bread, obviously.’

  ‘Well, that frees up a lot of space,’ pointed out Muriel.

  The old churchyard was beautiful in a strange way. The graves were very old and overgrown, the ancient stone crosses tilted on their sides, nearly all the writing eroded by the years and the wind and the sea. A few names repeated again and again: Perranmor; Tarnforth; Kirrin. It was mostly women and children. In Mount Polbearne, the men died at sea, and the sea held their bones and their histories and their stories for ever more.

  The freshly dug grave looked grim in the shadow of the ruined church. This was not a place for new burials; it seemed strange and odd, as if all the ancient skeletons were bunching up to make room.

  ‘Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was,’ said the vicar quietly as the men, with the help of the sturdy undertaker from the mainland, tried not to fumble lowering the large coffin into the ground. Gillian had, Polly thought, always been big.

  ‘And the spirit shall return unto God who gave it.’ And she made the sign of the cross over the grave.

  At this, Polly stepped up with the bag she had brought specially, and everyone took a handful of flour from the sack and threw it on to the top of the coffin, as Mrs Manse began that long journey from which there is no return. And everybody there hoped with all their hearts that her husband and her son would be waiting to greet her at the end of it.

  Chapter Five

  Polly was staring out of the window expectantly whilst trying to pretend that wasn’t at all what she was doing, even though she knew it didn’t matter as they were so ridiculously high up anyway: no one could see in. She’d changed her clothes, put on a nice flowery shirt. She was slightly out of the habit of getting dressed up, didn’t really know what to wear for meeting a member of Huckle’s family. She’d spoken to his parents on the phone, of course, but this was something different.

  She knew Dubose was younger than Huckle, and that they got on, but he’d never really held down a job or stuck to anything in the same way as his big brother, and now he was working on a farm in between travelling stints. But he sounded like fun. Polly couldn’t believe how important it was to her that he liked her. Both her sister and her mum had fallen in love with Huckle in about ten seconds flat. She hoped it worked both ways.

  ‘And don’t poo.’

  Neil was sulking because Huckle hadn’t taken him to the bus station. Polly had tried to cheer him up by bringing home his very favourite thing in all the world, a box full of polystyrene packing pieces. When he thought she wasn’t watching, or when she left the room, she could hear him jumping into the box and stomping up and down, kicking at the pieces with his little webbed feet. When she came back in, he’d immediately flutter out of the box and stand facing away from her, staring out of the window.

  The sky was pink-tinged when she saw the causeway gradually emerge, and soon after that she heard the roar of the motorbike banging up the cobbled streets. It was the noisiest thing on the island by far, but Polly could never hear it without smiling in anticipation. She nervously touched up the lipstick she didn’t normally bother with, and descended the stairs.

  A tall, slim figure stepped out of the sidecar and took off the spare helmet, shaking his head to reveal a mop of blond hair very like his brother’s. His face was narrower than Huckle’s, with a pointed chin, and pale blue eyes that looked absolutely primed to laugh.

  ‘WHOA!’ he said, looking up at the lighthouse. ‘NO WAY! You live here?’

  ‘Way,’ said Huckle, lifting out a stained suitcase. He came round to stand next to Polly. ‘And this is —’

  ‘Whoa! Yeah! Holly!’ said Dubose, coming over and kissing her excitedly on both cheeks.

  ‘Polly,’ said Polly.

  ‘Even better,’ said Dubose, twinkling at her. ‘In fact that’s exactly what I said, it’s just my strange exotic accent made it difficult to understand.’

  Polly couldn’t help but smile, even as Huckle was rolling his eyes.

  ‘Come in,’ she said. Dubose let Huckle carry his bag.

  ‘Where’s Neil?’ said Huckle, as they tramped round and round up the steps, Dubose exclaiming every five seconds.

  ‘He’s in a bad mood because you didn’t take him to the bus station.’

  ‘He does like buses,’ said Huckle.

  ‘This is your bird, right? Cool,’ said Dubose.

  They entered the sitting room at the top of the tower, which Polly had spent a long time making as nice as she could. Neil had spread packing peanuts all over the room, everywhere, in a huge mess. He had pooed in the box for good measure.

  ‘Neil!’ said Polly in exasperation. Dubose burst out laughing.

  Dubose regaled them over dinner with his travelling tales, most of them involving accidentally ending up at VIP parties or backstage at gigs. There were also a good few where he completely ran out of money or found himself upside down in a bin. He told a good story against himself.

  ‘And those girls!’ he sighed. ‘Oh Huckle, you gotta see those blondes up in Reykjavik.’

  Huckle gave a slightly tight smile.

  ‘Isn’t Clemmie missing you? Isn’t it calving time?’

  Dubose nodded. ‘She’s an amazing girl. And she knows that sometimes I just have to break free, follow my dreams, man, you know?’

  ‘Do all your dreams end up with you sleeping in a bin?’

  Dubose turned away.

  ‘Polly, this quiche is absolutely sensational. I think you might be a genius. Are you a genius?’

  ‘No,’ said Polly, smiling, even though she couldn’t help watching the dynamic. It was strange to hear Huckle sounding fed up; it so rarely happened.

  ‘She is a genius, Huckle. You should buy her a bakery.’

  There was a slight awkward silence. After a moment, Huckle started
clearing away. Dubose glanced at his watch.

  ‘So, where are we going now?’

  It was 9.30.

  ‘Um,’ said Polly. ‘Actually we normally just… go to bed.’

  Dubose looked aghast. ‘Seriously? But it’s Friday night!’

  ‘I know,’ said Polly. ‘But we’ve got people coming over on Sunday. Hopefully you’ll like them.’

  ‘Well that’s a pile of bullcrap,’ Dubose shouted, wavering unsteadily on top of the gantry.

  They were recovering from the rabbit pie Polly had made for Sunday lunch. It had been a sensational pie, but actually it was hard to remember now, as Huckle had also brought a couple of litres of his honey mead, which was guaranteed to remove all nerve endings from the waist down, as well as ensuring that the next day someone followed you around the room hitting you repeatedly on the head with a sharp-edged brick.

  But today, Polly had been thinking dreamily, that didn’t matter.

  Above their sitting room in the lighthouse was the light itself. It worked automatically – every so often, as part of their complicated property deeds, a man would zip up the stairs and give it a polish and a checkover – and round the outside was a metal walkway, reached by a narrow staircase that allowed access for cleaning and maintenance. They had been told repeatedly, and in no uncertain terms, when they bought the property that this walkway did not belong to them, that it was dangerous and to be used only by clipped-in, safety-harness-and-vest-and-helmet-wearing qualified lighthouse operatives.

  So naturally every sunny day they went up there with giant bean bags and sprawled out around the little platform. It was best if you didn’t look down between the metal slats, and not a great idea in high winds, but on a beautiful day it was absolutely stunning: you felt as if you were floating through the clouds. Today, Polly and her best friend Kerensa were on the sunny sheltered ledge at the top of the little staircase that led back into the main body of the lighthouse; Reuben was sprawled fearlessly across the metal walkway getting a suntan, and Huckle was perched on top of it with his back against the lighthouse itself, long legs stretched out to the other side, gazing out to sea. Dubose was sitting nearby and Neil was stomping about looking for more pastry scraps. His claws made a clicking sound on the walkway as he went round so often Polly thought he might get dizzy. When he got to Reuben, he just hopped up on his leg and walked over the top of him.

  Meanwhile, Reuben and Dubose had got into a ridiculous barney about grain subsidies, which had made Dubose all pink in the face but which Reuben was patently enjoying.

  ‘Poo on him!’ hissed Kerensa. ‘Do it, Neil, I mean it! I’m sick of this argument.’

  ‘NO MORE POO!’ said Polly loftily, just as Neil did in fact poo straight through the metal slats and all the way down to the rocks, where some children with fishing nets were pottering around looking for tiddlers and prising off shellfish. The five at the top of the lighthouse peered down and held their breath, then let out a collective sigh of relief as the poo splashed harmlessly into a nearby rock pool.

  ‘All I want is for my puffin to learn to use a human toilet,’ said Polly. ‘Is that really too much to ask?’

  ‘And the other reason grain subsidies are great —’

  ‘So anyway,’ said Reuben, ignoring Dubose and turning to Polly, ‘why don’t you let me buy you the bakery?’

  Polly gasped.

  Reuben was quite relentless when he got on to a topic. He was an old friend of Huckle’s who’d made a lot of money selling some kind of Internet thing in San Francisco – he often tried to explain it, but Polly could never quite get to the bottom of it. Anyway, now he owned a private surfing beach and stunning modernist house in north Cornwall. Kerensa was Polly’s best friend from Plymouth. Initially she’d thought Polly moving to a tidal island was the stupidest idea she’d ever heard of. Then she’d started visiting. She absolutely couldn’t bear Huckle’s loud friend Reuben, until she’d accidentally got off with him one night, and since then they’d been utterly inseparable, and were now married.

  ‘I mean it. This woman sounds worse than Mrs Manse. And this Malcolm… what does he do?’

  ‘Um, consultant?’ said Polly.

  ‘Um, grain subsidies?’ said Dubose, who was still standing up and beginning to feel a bit foolish.

  ‘What kind of consultant? Hospital consultant? Insolvency consultant? Would You Like Fries With That consultant?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘He sounds rubbish,’ said Reuben. ‘Let me buy him out. I’ll tell him I’m a major bakery consultant – which by the way I totally could be – and then I’ll buy both of them and then we’re done.’

  ‘Well we’re not done, are we?’ said Polly crossly. ‘I don’t want you to buy me out of trouble.’

  ‘Why not?’ said Reuben. ‘Buying people out of trouble is totally one of the things I’m amazing at.’

  ‘Is he always like this?’ grumbled Dubose.

  ‘You should probably sit down, Dubose,’ said Huckle. ‘We’re pretty high up.’

  ‘You’d be a worse boss than this Malcolm guy,’ mumbled Polly. ‘Anyway, no. Don’t. We’re friends. We’d only fall out. Please.’

  ‘But I always buy everyone,’ said Reuben, puzzled.

  Polly couldn’t explain to him, couldn’t make him see – in fact he would think it utterly ridiculous – how insulting his suggestion was to her. It was partly because she did think working with your friends was a bad idea, even if Reuben completely ignored the bakery after he bought it. But that would be bad too: it just showed how unimportant he thought what she did was. And also, although Reuben would find this concept hilarious, she thought she was like him. She was an entrepreneur, she worked for herself; she hoped one day to work her way up the ladder, to be the owner, not just the manager of her business.

  One thing Mrs Manse had been great about was leaving her alone – when she wasn’t complaining – and letting her run things her way, and she had really loved it, really got a taste for it. She enjoyed making decisions and seeing how things turned out. She didn’t want Reuben swanning in with his friends telling her she was doing it wrong. She didn’t want a helping hand she hadn’t earned. She wanted to do it herself.

  ‘Well not me,’ she said.

  ‘And not me either,’ said Kerensa, drinking more mead.

  ‘Apart from that bracelet that was so heavy you strained your wrist,’ pointed out Polly.

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Kerensa, grinning. ‘I forgot about that.’

  Polly smiled at her.

  ‘How’s being back at work?’

  Kerensa scowled. ‘Oh God, it’s rubbish. I wish my staff behaved like flunkies. Everyone Reuben works with behaves like terrified flunkies.’

  ‘Maybe you should be more frightening.’

  ‘I’m not sure that’s possible.’

  ‘Don’t work!’ said Reuben. ‘Anyway, it means I get less sex.’

  ‘Yes, just twice a day,’ whispered Polly, and Kerensa giggled and blushed. She had insisted on going back to work after months of honeymooning, touring the globe and staying in fancy hotels, eating in the best restaurants and, as she pointed out herself, getting fat.

  ‘The worst thing is,’ she said, ‘the other women are all SO THIN. There’s every imaginable fabulous thing you could eat in the world, ever, all the time, and it’s all amazing and gorgeous, and they don’t eat ANY OF IT. They just go and have spa treatments!’ She scowled. ‘Before we got married, I thought I was really brilliant at being thin and not eating much. But man, they take it to an entirely new level.’

  ‘You look fantastic,’ said Polly, loyally but also honestly. Before, when Kerensa had been ferociously slim and fit, she had had a hard look about her. Now she was a little rounder and softer and looked a lot younger in the face, and it suited her.

  ‘All those jumped-up Barbie dolls talking about suntans,’ shivered Reuben. ‘God. You’re the best of them all, Kay, because I always choose the best kinds of things. Always. W
hich is why I chose you…’

  He was about to start on a long diatribe again. Polly lay back in the sun and smiled to see her friend so happy.

  ‘I did need to go back to work, though,’ whispered Kerensa. ‘It felt wrong just lying around spending money. I mean, it was fun for about five minutes. But after that it was all a bit WAGtastic.’

  ‘I agree with you,’ Polly said, mildly. ‘Obviously. Because I’m about to start working for Malcolm the Consultant.’