by Susan Duncan
“Twelve dollars and fifty cents,” Kate says at the till. “The coffee is free. Today only, our opening special.” She hands back his fifty-cents change and he drops it in a jar for community good works. She smiles a thank you, passes him a knife and fork wrapped in a napkin and tells him she will bring his food to him when it is ready.
He takes his newspaper outside on the deck where terracotta plant pots are lush with healthy young lemon trees. Old tin buckets, set out on a bench in a sunny, sheltered corner, are planted with fresh herbs: parsley, basil, thyme, oregano, chives, coriander. The fringes of strawberry-red umbrellas, donated by a coffee supplier hoping his beans will win favour, ripple like fingers over a keyboard.
Fifteen minutes later, the crowd from the Seagull’s first morning run swarms inside. “Like the banner outside, lovelies. Very creative!”
Ettie and Kate look at each other blankly. What banner? Ettie flicks her head towards the door and Kate dashes outside. And there it is, strung between two casuarinas, big, red and bold, written in a spidery hand:
Opin! Fri cofee. 2day
Sam and Jimmy sit at a picnic table under the sign.
“You, Jimmy?” Kate asks, pointing upwards.
“Yep!” Jimmy’s head wobbles like a jack-in-the-box. “I did it all, didn’t I, Sam?”
“You’re a genius, mate.”
Kate laughs. The Square is a parade of offshorers off to do the grocery shopping and take the kids to cricket practice. Early joggers. Mums wearing leotards and loose T-shirts, pushing prams. No chippies – not on a weekend. Plenty of dog walkers. All shapes and sizes – owners as well as dogs. Kate fills the water bowl under the outside tap, pushing aside the image of a snouty tan mutt with a white blaze who never harmed a flea.
A chunky, dark-headed figure lurks at the end of the wharf. Pacing impatiently, a mobile to his ear, his bark carries towards them.
“Is that the Weasel?” Kate asks in disbelief. As though she’s conjured him by thinking about Boag.
Sam squints. “Yeah. Skin of a freaking rhinoceros.”
The Weasel saunters towards them, his hands deep in the pockets of loose linen pants. His aftershave arrives ahead of him. He indicates the café with a casual roll of a shoulder. “Tell Ettie that timber like that wouldn’t even need a match on the right day,” he says in an oily voice.
“Insured to the hilt. You’d be doing us a favour,” Kate shoots back.
“Should we tell him about the bad lemonade he gave me, Sam?” Jimmy is anxious.
“He knows, mate. He knows.”
The Weasel makes his way back to the end of the wharf. Locals wrinkle their noses and step around him like he’s rotten meat.
Fast Freddy cruises in on his last run after a nightshift made even longer because his newly married offsider overslept. The Weasel jumps aboard the water taxi, giving the finger to everyone in general.
“Wondered why we hadn’t heard a squeal from his jetty before now. Looks like he’s been gone a couple days. Reckon he’ll go for a spin in his boat first off,” Sam says. “Roar past the Spit, trying for the biggest wake he can manage, just to make a point. There’s time to pick up a couple of coffees and then watch the show.” He slaps Jimmy on the back.
“Can I drink coffee too, Sam?”
“How about a fruit juice?”
“What show?” Kate asks.
Sam grins.
The pace is steady all morning. Kate and Ettie establish a rhythm to avoid crashing behind the counter or double-filling orders. When the breakfast rush ends, Ettie’s cakes sell well but the sandwiches remain untouched.
“Do they look weird or something?” Kate asks, worried she’s made a mess of them.
“Of course not. Wait till lunchtime. Then they’ll move.”
The two women finally manage to take a break on the deck in a short lull between morning tea and lunch. They see a boat – it looks like the Weasel’s – stalled on the water, drifting east towards the ocean. They sip their coffees while a tide that’s fat and full sings loudly under their feet.
A tinny glides alongside the seawall and a couple of Island musos disembark. “Think that boat out there needs a hand,” Ettie says, pointing.
Phil, six and a half feet tall, says with a knowing smile: “Not that boat.” He has a red polka-dot bandana tied on his shaved head. His offsider, Rex, bare-chested under greasy overalls and wearing fancy cowboy boots with red leather flames, follows him with a guitar in his hand.
“Thought a little concert might help to kick off the opening,” Phil explains.
Rex squints through the smoke of the cigarette hanging from his bottom lip. “Cost you a coupla burgers. Full works. Even the blinkin’ beetroot, if you must. Suit you both?”
The two women nod, lost for words.
Phil rocks back on his heels and scans the crowd, like a cormorant looking for fish. “Good opportunity to show the mob on this side of the water how life should be lived. Poor pissants think a garage is the meaning of life.”
“Not all of them, surely,” Kate says, defensive. It wasn’t so long ago that she hungered for a garage. And to be truthful, would still like one if it meant bypassing the frequently vandalised car park.
“Yeah. But it makes us feel good to think we’re ahead occasionally.” Phil grins.
Soon, there’s a riffle of chords, a half-tune from a keyboard and they kick off with a full-bodied roar that stalls the joggers and sends the dogs cowering under the picnic tables, where they lie with their paws over their ears, emitting low, pathetic whines.
All afternoon, the music rocks on, bringing business from the bays, the Island and mainland. At one point, Kate goes onto the deck to clear the tables.
She stops dead when she sees her mother wandering the Square. Dressed in a flouncy red-and-green summer dress, set off with chunky costume jewellery that catches the light as she moves. Her face is painted into a ruddy clownishness – green eyelids, pink cheeks, red lips. Tiny black holes for eyes.
Kate takes a deep breath, slings a tea towel over her shoulder and marches up to her.
“Emily. You should have rung to let me know you were coming. I would have saved you a prime table.”
“Is it true?” Emily asks. “You’ve bought into this … this … revolting disaster!”
“Around here we call it character. How’d you find out?”
“How do you think? I rang the magazine asking for you and some total stranger said you were in the café business. I laughed and she hung up on me. Me! I’m your mother, Kate, and you couldn’t even be bothered giving me a call. I felt like a fool.”
“Yeah. Well. Never mind. Listen, we’re flat out. Opening day. If you want to eat, have a coffee, fine. Otherwise, I’ll call you next week.”
“Eat?” Emily shouts red-faced, waving her arm to take in the wharf, the café, the Square. “Here? Are you completely mad? I’m not sure why you’ve done this, Kate. All that time, money and effort spent educating you for something better and here you are, a waitress in a stinking rat-hole. Now call me a taxi. I can’t bear to watch this … this horror show any more.”
“There’s a pay phone on the main road. You can’t miss it.” Kate’s voice is hard, her blue-green eyes granite.
Emily’s voice goes soft, which makes it all the more lethal. “You’ll ruin this like you ruin everything, Kate. You’re a loser. Have been from the start. If this is meant to hurt me, well, congratulations, it’s worked. I’m appalled. Disgusted if you want the truth. Did you never consider for a moment how I might feel about this … this step into the gutter? Of course not. You’ve never shown the slightest interest in my wellbeing.”
Kate looks at her mother, standing there like an over-decorated Christmas tree. “Don’t come back, Emily,” she says, softly. She reaches out a hand, almost touches her mother’s shoulder, lets it drop. Emily’s arms are folded tightly across her chest in the constant barricade of Kate’s childhood.
As her mother backs off her heel catc
hes in the sand and she almost falls. Before Kate can reach out, Sam appears out of nowhere and rescues the old girl. Emily is instantly flirtatious.
“There you go,” he says, dropping her arm like it’s on fire. “If you don’t mind me saying so, mate, you’re a bit on the wrong side of seventy for heels like that.”
Her face hardens. Lips are pulled into a tight thin line. “Seventy!” she hisses, already on her way. “Seventy!”
Sam slings an arm around Kate’s shoulder. “What was that?”
“My mother.”
“You sure?”
“Yep.”
“Jeez.” He kisses the side of her head. “You know the saying Like mother, like daughter? Well, I can guarantee, Kate, you need never worry you’re going to turn into a woman like that.” He stares at the receding figure of Emily Jackson with a mixture of pity and disbelief. “Has it always been about her?”
“Yep.”
“Well then, that makes you another in a long line of Cook’s Basin miracles. You got out while there was still hope and we’re all here to save you.” He wraps his beefy arms around her and pulls her against his chest in a hug that knocks the wind out of her.
Kate looks into his eyes and gives him a smile that for some unfathomable reason shoots him straight to the moon.
On the deck, in the Square, it is a kaleidoscopic muddle – shorts and singlets, swirling skirts and sarongs, tail-wagging dogs dropping balls at bare feet, hats swatting sticky flies. The breeze is no more than a warm tickle. Phil’s molten voice floats above Rex’s tapping Cuban heels.
Ettie and Kate lose control of the kitchen. Jimmy leaps to the rescue.
“I’m gonna help, Kate, is that okay? I’ll be great. You’ll see.” He hip-hops from one foot to the other and plunges his hands into boiling water without a yelp. Suds skyrocket and dishes fly. Fast Freddy grabs a tea towel while he waits for his cheese, tomato and herb omelette.
“You’re a genius, Jimmy. No scungy bits at all.” Fast Freddy, accustomed to fireshed clean-ups when the helpers’ attention to detail fails dismally after a few glasses of red, is full of praise.
With the sink clear Kate sends Jimmy on a round-up of empty plates. Then has second thoughts. She watches and listens for crashes. One. A fork. Through the deck slats and into the water with a splash. No problems. She keeps him away from full plates of food, there is no point in pushing your luck.
The dishes pile up again. Jenny and the other two Js waltz in with smiley faces, rocking to the beat. They bump Kate out of the way. “This is a day for pros,” they say with big smiles. “Watch and learn!” They help Ettie regain control of the orders, the kitchen, the cleaning up, before wafting off back into the sunshine. When the pressure builds again, Marcus quietly slips behind the counter. “Today, I am your sous chef,” he announces to Ettie with a happy grin. “It is good to feel humbleness. But of course, only occasionally.”
They battle on till the sun dips below the hills in an explosion of red, gold, orange and purple. As a final gesture, Ettie asks the chef to deep-fry three huge baskets of salt and pepper squid. She drops the crispy white slivers into little paper bags, stacks them on trays, then wanders through the crowd. Every dog in the square follows in a conga line, noses raised to the scent, hoping for some charity on a day that feels historic.
“On the house – thanks for being part of the celebration,” Ettie says, handing out the food. “See you again. The Briny Café is back open for business.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
On Monday morning, after the early morning rush of chippies and commuters, Ettie offers to do the banking. “I need to do a bit of extra shopping,” she explains. “The weekend almost cleaned us out.”
Kate says she’ll get on with restocking the fridges. She passes Ettie a pillowslip heavy with cash. “Don’t get mugged or leave it at the checkout,” she says, not joking.
In town, Ettie heaves the pillowslip onto the bank counter where it lands with a thunk. “Won the lottery or something?” asks the bank teller, a surfie-looking woman with sun-bleached hair, a deep tan and a body hard with muscle. She eyes it nervously, peeks inside. Finally reassured, she tips it upside down. “Had a bloke bring in a red-bellied black snake in a bag once,” she explains. “He had a few banking issues at the time. Frightened the shit out of me.”
“What did you do?”
“Took off, with all the other tellers, locked the bank and called WIRES. Then we cancelled the bloke’s accounts and suggested the bank next door.”
The counter is awash with cash. Ettie feels ridiculously proud. “It’s our first weekend in a new business. Not quite organised yet, the money’s all in $100 bundles. The coins are sorted though.”
She waits for twenty minutes while the teller weighs and counts so fast there is no hope of keeping up. The final balance is forty cents under. Kate is a natural with money, she thinks, trying not to feel smug that her partner is proving all the doubters wrong.
The teller indicates Ettie should wait a minute and slides off her stool to go through a heavy metal door, her backside as tight as a drum under grey trousers. A couple of minutes later she returns with a leather satchel and cotton bag.
“One for notes. One for coins. Bit classier than a pillowslip,” she explains with a smile. “Good luck.”
After the first rounds in the battle to remove the Weasel are fired without any instant results, the Misses Skettle ask Lindy, the real estate agent, to do a property search to find out whether he owns the house or is a tenant. If the latter, could she locate the owners and advise them of the problems he is causing? Perhaps an eviction might be in order?
Lindy tracks down the background of the property that, unusually, she knows very little about. After some digging, she discovers the owners are living overseas. She taps out an email containing what she hopes are tactful but relevant questions.
The owners, it turns out, have never set eyes on their tenant – the deal was done over the web. Lindy discusses the issues and advises they use a respected agent in all future dealings. She is immediately hired to manage the property from now on. She begins by evicting the Weasel, then phones the Misses Skettle and fills them in.
The Weasel – real name Leo Merrizzi according to Lindy – accepts his fate. His tank water is putrid, his pontoon is a wreck and his commuter boat is still being repaired by Frankie who has been quietly advised by one and all to do his best but not his utmost. And if Frankie finds – after a suitable amount of time has passed – that the engine is beyond help, then the general consensus would be that that is a perfect result. It is, of course, his call.
Frankie, a loner who stays out of local feuds, politics and issues, and who lives by his own moral code, gives no verbal undertaking one way or the other. No one is fussed. Not many engines survive a serious dose of sugar that caramelises with heat and seizes most of the engine parts. The Weasel, to put it mildly, is stuffed.
Meanwhile, a troop of Islanders is assigned to drain the polluted water tank the moment the Weasel departs. It must be cleaned out, and anyone queuing for a top up from the mains water supply is advised he will have to wait a little longer for service while the tank is refilled. The new tenants, a family with three young children, plan to live on the Island full-time and are due to move in shortly. For once, no one gets narky about water rights.
Finally, the Weasel packs his clothes and few belongings and calls Fast Freddy to pick him up. In the midst of universal celebrations for a plan well executed, however, everything goes pear-shaped.
“I never asked where the Weasel wanted to go,” Fast Freddy reports to Sam when he catches up with him in the Square. “I was on the way to drop him at the ferry wharf when he tapped my shoulder. Jumped like a startled ant, I did.”
“And?” Sam asks, trying not to sound impatient.
“Well, we’re not rid of him yet. I delivered him to a yacht anchored deadset centre of Oyster Bay. An old boat, Ciao Bella, almost alongside Artie. It hasn’t shifted off the
mooring for as long as I’ve been drivin’ water taxis.”
Sam is silent while he thinks through the ramifications. “Wise up Artie, did you?” he asks, hoping that having a vital role to play in the welfare of the community might put a bit of spark into the old fella, who’s been showing signs of going downhill lately.
“Second call off the rank,” Freddy says, with a hint of smugness. “He’s on full alert. He’s offered to set off his emergency siren, which he reckons will have the double benefit of alerting us to the arrival of any customers and scaring them off. He says he paid a fortune for the siren and he’s never used it. He’d be pleased to get his money’s worth.”
“Civilised hours only, mate, or there’ll be an uproar. What’s it like below at Artie’s?”
“Stinkin’ mess.”
“Life-threatening?”
“Just a crippled old man with dirty dishes piled up, lying in a fug of overripe sheets. Nothing too desperate.”
“I’ll see if I can round up some volunteers.”
“Startin’ next week. I’ve taken care of it for now.”
“You’re —”
Fast Freddy holds his palm outwards like a cop stopping the traffic. “Don’t say it, Sam. Or I’ll have to hit you, which would go against all me instincts.”
“Star, mate, that’s all I was going to articulate.”
A few leaves skitter in front of them. The two men look towards a blow that’s building in the west. The single-note yammering of cicadas carries across the water. A gust hits the umbrellas on the deck of The Briny. They crack like whips. The cicadas suddenly go quiet.
“Gotta fly while I still can,” Fast Freddy says. “Shapin’ up to be another doozy. Might get some real rain this time.”
Sam dashes for the shelter of the café and bangs on the door. After a minute Ettie peers through the glass before opening up.
