by Jenny Colgan
He shook his head. ‘No. I heard there’s a place going on a fishing boat.’
It was true. Despite high unemployment in the area, it was still difficult to persuade men to go into fishing, which was seen as dangerous, uncomfortable and poorly paid. Jayden’s place on Archie’s new boat hadn’t been filled.
Polly looked at him sternly.
‘Dave,’ she said, not wanting to waste Archie’s time. ‘Are you sure you’re not frightened of fish?’
Dave shrugged.
‘Dunno,’ he said. ‘I only really eat fish fingers. I’m frightened of sharks, though.’
‘There’s only little sharks out there,’ said Polly.
‘Little sharks are the most poisonous,’ he said. ‘Or no, hang on, is that spiders?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Polly.
Archie came over.
‘Come on then,’ he said to Dave. ‘You know this chap?’ he asked Polly.
‘Um, a bit,’ said Polly, unwilling to dump Dave in it.
‘Reckon he’s up to it?’
‘Be nice to him,’ said Polly. ‘He’s just had a baby.’
Archie’s face broke into a smile. ‘Oh congratulations,’ he said. Polly smiled to herself about what an old softie he was.
‘Have you got kids?’ asked Dave.
Archie smiled. ‘Three. Well, three plus…’
Polly turned to him.
‘No way!’
‘Yes way. And not just us.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, Bob at the chemist’s got another on the way. And Dave at the pub. And Muriel.’
Polly shook her head.
‘MURIEL? How far along?’
‘Yup, you got it.’
Polly thought about it.
‘Seriously? The wake?’
Archie shrugged.
‘It’s going to be the first baby boom in Mount Polbearne for about two hundred years. We’re going to need a school.’
‘No way,’ said Polly. ‘That’s amazing. And I’m guessing all the boys will be called Tarnie.’
‘Well they won’t be called Cornelius,’ grunted Archie. He turned his attention to Dave again. ‘Are you afraid of hard work?’
‘Not sure,’ said Dave.
‘Can you handle a knife?’
Dave looked dubious.
‘Oh well,’ said Archie. ‘It’ll give me some practice with babysitting. Come on then, soft lad.’
Dave followed him, rigid with terror. Polly watched, smiling, as he wobbled and slipped on the jetty. Archie had to practically lift him on board. Polly shook her head. Well. They would see.
The tide was out, and on the cobbled causeway Patrick was taking lots of photographs. It was odd, thought Polly, as she returned to her flat and sat at her window, opening a beer; the idea that the village might change from the way it had been for hundreds and hundreds of years. And that she had arrived to see the very end of it. The thought made her sad.
Her phone rang.
‘If this is someone calling me to tell me that they’re pregnant, congratulations,’ said Polly. ‘I do christening cakes.’
‘Not quite,’ said Kerensa’s overexcited voice. ‘But the next best thing…’
Chapter Twenty-Nine
They had immediately convened a summit for the next day. Reuben had offered to helicopter Kerensa over, but she had declined.
‘Well you’re an idiot!’ said Polly. ‘I’d love to go in a helicopter. I think the rest of our lives should be spent just riding round and round in Reuben’s helicopter.’
They hugged in the pub courtyard.
‘We’re getting married!’ shrieked Kerensa. Every time they’d spoken recently, Polly reflected, she’d sounded like she was going to explode. Reuben must be rubbing off on her. ‘We’re getting married! WAAAH!’
Polly marched up to the bar and ordered champagne. Dave looked very doubtful, but managed to dust something down from the back of the fridge.
‘Since when is my bankrupt mate ordering champagne?’ frowned Kerensa.
‘AHA!’ said Polly, smiling. ‘You’re not the only one with news.’
The post had come that morning – the postie always brought it into the bakery. Jayden had never had a letter in his life and was always fascinated by what arrived, even though it tended to be flour invoices and a lot of bank paperwork. Today there was a large cardboard envelope with Do Not Bend printed on it, addressed to Polly, handwritten. She recognised the lovely handwriting, dusted the flour off her hands and opened it, puzzled.
Carefully she extracted the contents, and gasped. It was a painting: a beautiful, architecturally precise rendering of the Little Beach Street Bakery, with the masts and sails in the foreground, the bread in the window, a tiny watercolour suggestion of her inside. It was ravishing.
‘Chris!’ Polly said in delight.
‘That sulky guy?’ said Jayden, squinting at the painting. ‘That’s REALLY good,’ he added with feeling. ‘I wish I could do that.’
‘Isn’t it?’ said Polly, her heart swelling. ‘He hasn’t painted like that in such a long time. Oh, how lovely of him.’
There was a note attached. Polly read it, and her hand flew to her mouth.
‘Oh my God!’ she yelped. ‘Oh my God! We’ve sold the flat! We’ve sold it! And we did all right… we’ve paid off our debts! Oh my God, we’re going to be discharged! WHOOP!’
And she turned up the radio and danced around the counter with Jayden, who hopped willingly. Neil squawked and jumped up and down so he didn’t miss out on the fun.
‘I don’t know what that means,’ Jayden said. ‘But it sounds good.’
‘It is GREAT!’ said Polly. ‘Oh my God. I’m free! I’m free! I have money! I’m free! I can…’
She sobered up.
‘Wow, I could move.’
Jayden looked at her.
‘Why would you move?’
‘You’ve changed your tune,’ teased Polly. ‘Of course I’m not going to move away from Polbearne. I mean out of the flat. Oh my God. But I could buy out Mrs Manse. Or I could put a roof on the flat. I could…’
She glanced down at the paper once more. ‘Okay, I couldn’t do that much. But STILL!’
And that was the reason for the happy raiding of the petty cash tin to buy some champagne. Polly also, unselfishly, gave the picture to the nice young men at the restaurant, who sold it almost immediately for a fortune and straight away got him to do more, which also sold. She finally kept the tenth one for herself, before she priced herself out of the market.
‘So,’ said Polly, settling down at their table in the courtyard, unable to keep the grin off her face. Kerensa had hugged her and told her how wonderful it was and how you wouldn’t believe she was the same person after what a terrible rotten old misery-guts she’d been six months ago, to which Polly had rolled her eyes and said seriously, she wasn’t that bad, and Kerensa had said, okay, no totally, you were brilliant, and so happy, and then they both fell about laughing.
‘So what about that guy you hated?’ said Polly.
‘That was before I had sex with him,’ said Kerensa. ‘Man.’
‘All right, all right, no more,’ said Polly. ‘Not to someone who is never going to have sex again and has settled for being a successful businesswoman. Congratulations!’
‘I know!’ said Kerensa. ‘This is going to be awesome. We’re going to have the most immense wedding ever.’
‘Ha,’ said Polly. ‘You’re starting to sound like him.’
‘We’re very similar in a lot of ways,’ said Kerensa. ‘Except he’s really annoying and I’m not.’
Polly smiled.
‘And you have to be my maid of honour,’ said Kerensa, swigging her champagne.
‘I am FAR too old for that.’
‘Nonsense. You have to. I have to have about a billion bridesmaids anyway; we’re getting married in America.’
‘No way!’
‘Yes way. Reuben’s family hav
e some massive estate up in Cape Cod on the ocean, which is apparently quite nice.’ She tried to say this in a way that indicated it wasn’t at all a big deal, but the two of them couldn’t keep it up and fell about laughing at that too.
As if magnetically drawn by the champagne cork popping, posh Samantha popped her head into the pub courtyard and came towards them, stopping several metres away as the sunlight washed across Kerensa’s absurd, bird’s egg engagement ring and blinded everyone within range.
‘OH MY GOODNESS,’ she said. ‘NEWS!’
‘It is news,’ said Polly. ‘Do you want some fizz, or are you pregnant too?’
Samantha joined them immediately and peppered Kerensa with questions about the size of the Cape Cod estate, the number of guests, the catering options. Then she went quiet, put her immaculate hands on her tiny lap – her own engagement ring was huge, but nothing on Kerensa’s, which technically qualified as a weapon – and sighed.
‘You know, I don’t think any of our friends have ever been to a wedding like that.’
Polly and Kerensa exchanged looks.
‘Of course you can come,’ said Kerensa kindly.
Samantha let out a tiny shriek of joy.
‘Now of course you know Reuben is insisting on a Star Wars theme…’
The girls left the pub later, quite tiddly, and wandered over to the dock, where the boys were making a commotion. Polly looked over. Dave was holding up a gigantic fish, his face red with pleasure.
‘You didn’t catch that?’ she said. Dave was beaming. The fish was the size of his chest.
‘First big cod I’ve seen round these parts for a few years,’ said Archie. ‘Those quotas must be working.’
‘And Dave caught it,’ said Polly, trying to keep the disbelief out of her voice.
‘You’re kidding, aren’t you? This boy’s a natural-born fisherman. Scared of nothing, he is.’
Dave was beaming. Jayden came out from the bakery to take a photograph.
‘I love fishing,’ Dave told him. ‘I don’t know how you could have given it up.’
Jayden rubbed his fingers down his white apron. His tummy was already showing the signs of his career change, promising to emerge into a very impressive belly in the years to come. Being Jayden, of course, he had no malice in him.
‘That’s really cool,’ he said. ‘Are you going to sell it to Andy’s chippy?’
He lined them all up so he could take a group photo.
‘We should put this in his window,’ he said. ‘So that everyone who goes there thinks that all their cod comes from that fish.’
‘And he can put his prices up even more,’ muttered someone. Andy had not been slow to take advantage of all the new trade, particularly at high tide. But his fish and chips remained as hot and crackling and salty as ever, the fleshy fish generous and silken, with plenty of scraps in the bag, so no one minded too much really.
Kerensa and Polly made their now traditional drop-in to get some chips and Fanta, then sat and kicked their legs on the harbour wall.
‘Aren’t you on a wedding diet?’ teased Polly.
‘Sod that,’ said Kerensa. ‘Anyway, God only knows what I’m going to be wearing.’
Chapter Thirty
Things were changing, thought Polly as she moved through the town, taking the cash box to Mrs Manse. She had to excuse herself to get out of people’s way, there were cars nudging their way down roads that were far too narrow to take them, and people were looking oddly at Neil perched on her shoulder, which made her feel like a weird cat lady and was extremely annoying. Although the bakery was doing so well, she still wasn’t sure about so many new people in her home, and the bridge would make it even worse. The no-bridge campaign was still running strong, but could they really halt progress?
She hadn’t been over to the old bakery in a little while; Jayden tended to deal with all that. As long as Mrs Manse was barking at him, everything seemed all right with the world. So she was a little shocked as she approached to see Gillian cowering behind the counter as a man Polly had never seen before gesticulated at her.
Without thinking, Polly marched right in. The man was wearing red trousers and had a loud, abrasive London accent. His face was as red as his trousers, and he was shouting so loudly, spittle was coming out. Neither of them saw her enter.
‘You can’t charge for this shit!’ he was yelling. ‘You can’t eat this! I’m going to get trading standards on you! If a supermarket did this, they’d get shut down. You can’t rip off decent people like this for awful bloody sandwiches! It’s a cheek! This mayo is on the turn.’
Polly felt suddenly completely torn between her love for good, decent, honest food – which she really did believe in – and defending what now felt, beyond all measure, like her home town, her people.
She coughed loudly. The man turned round, still furious. He was big.
‘Excuse me,’ she said, and as she did so she felt her accent get more Cornish, more local than the generic southern English it normally was. ‘This is our town, right? And if you don’t like our sandwiches, you are more than welcome to pee off right back where you came from.’
‘But they’re bloody stale.’
‘That’s how we like them,’ said Polly, folding her arms defiantly. ‘Now I would suggest it would be a good idea for you to leave. In fact, tell everyone else you know not to come by either, because if they’re all horrible thugs who bully old ladies, I think we’re better off without you, don’t you? Now do you want to keep abusing an eighty-year-old, because I have Officer Charlie on my speed dial.’
She held up her phone menacingly.
‘This place sucks,’ shouted the man angrily. ‘I hope you all go to hell.’
‘So do I,’ said Polly. ‘If it would keep the scum out.’
The man crashed the rickety old wooden door so hard the entire shop shook. Polly looked at Mrs Manse; she was white.
‘What’s wrong with you?’ Polly said, trying to make a joke of it. ‘Normally you could run nine guys like that out of town before breakfast.’
Mrs Manse leant on the counter top. The man had thrown the sandwich across it, and there were smears of old salad cream everywhere. Her hands were shaking. Polly still tried to make light of it.
‘Don’t you think I’m turning local? Do you think I’d pass muster?’
Mrs Manse didn’t say anything, just stared at the counter. Polly put the cash box down and went round to her.
‘Look,’ she said. ‘Sit down a minute, okay? He’s just one stupid man. Don’t let it get to you. He’s patently a total idiot.’
Mrs Manse shook her head.
‘They’re everywhere,’ she said, sitting down heavily on a stool. ‘They’re here now. That’s how it is. And they’re going to build this bridge and then it will truly be a disaster.’
Polly tilted her head.
‘Well, we have a lot more visitors. That’s good, isn’t it? We’ve never taken more money. We’re going to do well, give you a comfortable retirement.’
‘I’m nearly eighty,’ said Mrs Manse. ‘I don’t want to do this any more.’
Polly looked round the dusty, neglected shop.
‘Well,’ she said. ‘I have… not very much, but I have a little bit of money that I might be able to —’
Mrs Manse shook her head. ‘I don’t want your money,’ she said. ‘You keep paying me rent, you can keep the rest. I have plenty put by. I’m going to go and live with my sister in Truro. They’ve got bingo.’
‘Well, that sounds… that sounds good,’ said Polly, trying to be encouraging. ‘Are you sure you want to leave Mount Polbearne, though? You’ve lived here all your life.’
‘And it’s brought me…’
Mrs Manse trailed off. Polly suddenly felt that Gillian should have been playing bingo with her sister a long time ago. What the old woman said next took her completely by surprise.
‘I need to thank you, you know,’ she said.
Polly looked at her.
/>
‘Excuse me?’
Mrs Manse nodded.
‘Before you came… I couldn’t leave. I couldn’t go. You know. The town would have died without a bakery. Yes, I hated the work; it was my husband’s idea for me really. But I did it for him and I did it for the town, because it was my town and no other bugger would.’
Her face looked distant.
‘And I lost Alf and Jimmy, and well, that was…’
There was a long silence.
‘But then you came with your fancy ideas and your daft words for a basic bloomer and your stupid plans to make things different… and, well, it worked. Some of it,’ she added. Polly smiled to herself.
‘And now they don’t need me. There’s more and more of ’em, and they don’t need me. They’d rather go somewhere young that lets seabirds walk in the flour.’
She harrumphed this last bit. Polly patted her on the shoulder.
Mrs Manse’s eyes lifted and looked out.
‘I knew,’ she said. ‘I knew when that boy Tarnie never came home. Those other boys came home, but my boy never did.’
‘I know,’ said Polly respectfully.
‘I know now, I do, you know. I know…’
Her voice trailed off; she looked a little confused.
‘I know he isn’t… I know they won’t…’
Her old hand clasped Polly’s suddenly, with surprising strength.
‘I hope they’re together, Jim and Cornelius. Wherever they are.’
Then she burst into tears.
Polly moved fast, turning the shop sign over to ‘Closed’ – it wasn’t like the Little Beach Street Bakery, where there’d be a huge queue down the harbour by now; nobody was passing at all. She locked the door and immediately went into the back of the shop and switched on the kettle.
‘Nice cup of tea,’ she said. ‘Nice cup of tea.’
‘They don’t come back,’ said Mrs Manse.
And although Polly knew she meant her husband and her son and Tarnie, she couldn’t help thinking of someone else, someone whose hair glinted in the sun, who was so far away… As the kettle boiled, and she kept a worried eye on Mrs Manse, she wondered, wasn’t she doing kind of the same thing? Keeping everything nice for Huckle, just as Mrs Manse couldn’t bear the idea of not being there to greet her menfolk when they came home? Just in case? There wasn’t any more chance of Huck coming back, not really. Not at all. It had taken Gillian Manse a very long time to face the truth. When would Polly face it?
