The Briny Café

by Susan Duncan

  While one pauses for breath the other Miss Skettle takes over. At the first sign of antsy-ness from their audience, fingers are shaken. “Now, now, we haven’t finished yet. Hold your horses. The ferry’s not going anywhere for a few more minutes.” And they take a firm grip of an arm, a hand – even a thigh – and insist nobody move until they’ve had their say.

  “Sam’s mother and father raised him to love all living things and once a boy’s learned the sanctity of life, he doesn’t change. No matter how hard-pressed he is to put up with the bad habits of blow-ins without any idea of common decency. So if you’re wondering about that shifty-looking fellow who ended up in a garbage bag, well, if Sam says he had nothing to do with it, then that’s the truth. Now off you go. See you at the next fireshed dinner.”

  “And don’t forget to bring your torch.”

  When the old girls, hoarse by the end of the day, pack up feeling they’ve done their bit, Ettie wanders over to ask if they’d like a sandwich, a cake, a coffee, anything. “On the house, ladies. You’ve done a magnificent job.”

  “Thank you, Ettie, dear. We put on our dinner before we left this morning. It’ll be perfectly cooked by the time we get home.”

  “Slow cooking, always the best way,” Ettie says, impressed.

  “Eh?”

  The Briny Café, caught in the middle of publicity surrounding the death of a man well-known to police as a “colourful underworld identity”, does a roaring trade. Hordes of rubber neckers looking for vicarious thrills pound inside, desperate for coffee, cakes and the latest gossip. It doesn’t take Kate long to develop a soft spot for some of Bertie’s old rules, such as leaving the furniture in place. His insistence that people pay upfront also has its merits, as she discovers when a middle-aged couple complains about inedible food. Kate retrieves their empty plates and quietly insists they point out what exactly they couldn’t eat. When they demand a refund she politely but very firmly says no.

  The bloke, grey-haired with a middle-aged paunch, is red-faced. His wife, dyed black hair, too much jewellery, begins to look nervous and creeps towards the door. Fast Freddy materialises with a friendly smile. “Need any help, Kate?” he offers. The couple leaves, threatening action. Kate asks for their names. “You’ll go on a list,” she says. “You are never to be served in this café again.”

  “You can’t do that!” shouts the man.

  “Watch me,” she replies with a smile.

  The customer is not always right, she later tells Ettie, who would have refunded the money to keep the peace. “I spent most of my life being bullied by my mother. Those guys were amateurs.”

  That evening, when Ettie asks Marcus how he thinks the situation should have been handled, he tells her that Kate was absolutely correct. The couple were scammers.

  “I hate confrontation,” she confesses to him.

  “One of many things I find utterly delightful about you,” he replies happily.

  He has arranged for them to enjoy a picnic in his glamorous timber runabout. The Christmas Choir, he announces taking her hand in his and tenderly kissing each of the oven burns, is rehearsing for its annual performance on the Mary Kay. The sound is exquisite and a boat in the middle of Oyster Bay would be the perfect spot to hear it, didn’t she think?

  They set off at dog-paddle speed under a turquoise sky, throwing down an anchor to the lilting strains of “The Three Drovers”. The chef produces a basket of paper-thin pancakes wrapped around duck skin as crisp as toffee. They are laid alongside cucumber, green onion and a sauce he made himself using cinnamon and star anise. The skin, he tells Ettie because she asks for the secret, has been marinated in the same spices as well as ginger and garlic, then cooked at 60 degrees for three hours. At that point, he sews the skin to a rack to prevent it curling, ramps up the temperature of the oven and leaves it to roast for fifteen minutes. Finally, he ladles over smoking-hot vegetable oil until it turns the colour of beaten gold.

  “All this for me,” she murmurs on the end of a blissful sigh.

  He fills her wineglass and reaches into the basket, this time to reveal bowls of prawn and rice noodle salad with a chilli lime dressing, roasted cashews. There are little vanilla cream pots with fresh blueberries to follow, he says, delighted to see her eyes are closed with what he hopes is ecstasy.

  The choristers move on to “Silent Night”, sung in German, and he joins in with a soft voice, knowing the words by heart. The carol is achingly beautiful with the rich tones of the basses folding into the mix like a layer of chocolate. A few minutes later, the descants rise to the challenge of “The First Noel”.

  “Ya gonna put a hole in me bleedin’ boat if ya come much closer!”

  Marcus and Ettie jump.

  “My apologies, Artie, I did not realise the anchor was dragging. I was carried away by a beautiful woman, a beautiful night and beautiful music,” Marcus says, throwing out his arm to fend off.

  “Not bad are they?” Artie says.

  “Magnificent!”

  “Yeah. Well, you wouldn’t have said that three weeks ago. They were singin’ in the cracks, then.”

  “You know how to get to La Scala, Artie?”

  “Eh?”

  “Practise, Artie, practise.”

  “That joke’s older than me, Chef, and that’s sayin’ somethin’.”

  “You okay? You need anything?” Ettie asks, straightening her hair, her dress.

  “Nah. Good as gold.”

  “G’night, Artie.”

  “On the water, mate. Now and forever.”

  Ettie picks up on a plaintive note in his voice. “You sure you’re okay?”

  “Better than that bloody loser that went for a long sleep at the bottom of the sea! It’s all relative, Ettie.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  A week before Christmas, summer is an explosion of red bougainvillea, blue, white and magenta hydrangeas and the sweet scent of star jasmine permeating the spongy summer air. Sam and Kate are still avoiding each other. He is hurt. She is ashamed. Neither of them will admit it.

  The phone rings in the café. Kate and Ettie look at each other and Ettie shrugs helplessly. She is whipping egg whites for the lemon tarts. Egg whites, Kate now knows, do not wait for anyone. She slips the bowl of chocolate she is melting over hot water off the heat and wipes her hands. “We’re going to have to put up a sign saying we don’t do bookings, and put the same message on an answering machine,” she says.

  “Personal contact is the name of the game, Kate. No electronic speak in this café.”

  Kate smiles. “It’s a good sign though. Business is building.” She lifts the receiver.

  “Is that Miss Jackson?”

  “Yes.”

  “Kate Jackson?”

  “Yep.”

  “I’m calling from the Coastal Shores Retirement Resort. I am sorry to have to tell you that your mother is very ill. You should come immediately.”

  Emily Jackson looks pale despite her green eyelids and pillar-box-red lipstick. She lies in a frilly pink nightie in the frilly pink bedroom of her frilly unit – she reminds Kate of a frill-necked scorpion.

  With blue-veined hands Emily smooths the pink roses embroidered along the border of the top sheet. “They’ve told me I could die, you know. What would they know?”

  Kate is shocked into speechlessness and a worm turns in her stomach. Her mother has always been invincible. The idea of her dying is absurd. She is the kind of woman who trails destruction in her wake but never lets it catch up to her. “Who told you?”

  “Some baby-faced doctor who looks like she should still be in primary school.”

  “I thought your GP was a man.”

  “He’s away. She’s the locum. Not a brain in her head.” Emily takes a long laboured breath before continuing. There’s something missing from her voice. “I’ll wait till George gets back before I do anything.”

  “What exactly did she say is wrong?”

  Emily stares out the window over the
mossy terracotta rooftops of the other “inmates”, as she likes to call them. “Don’t pretend to be interested, Kate.”

  Kate refuses to be baited. She picks up a little breathlessness in Emily’s speech, sees blue tinges under her nails that are unpolished for the first time in Kate’s memory. Her confidence in her mother’s invincibility falters. “Maybe you should listen to her. What did she say?”

  “She wants me to go to hospital for some tests. Something to do with my heart. Nothing that can’t wait for George to sort out when he’s back.”

  Kate loses patience. God, she might die and all because she’d rather consult a man than a woman. “Well, if you won’t listen to the experts, there’s not much I can do. It’s your call.” She stands then hesitates. Her mother suddenly looks indecisive. Sad. Maybe even fearful.

  She is not yet old, Kate thinks, but she sees without a shadow of doubt that Emily is seriously ill. She sits back down.

  “Are you hungry? I could make you a sandwich. I’m becoming quite good at cooking. Ettie says I’m a quick learner.” A lifetime of anger and hurt begins leaking out of her. The waste makes her want to weep. Surely her mother, too, must be filled with regrets.

  What was it that Emily chased with such manic intensity, plunging from one disaster to another? How many times had they packed their bags late at night and fled from debt collectors, lounge lizards and every kind of cataclysm?

  Kate looks at her mother, lying so lightly on the bed she barely makes a mark. Her mind fills with a million questions, but one stands alone. She searches for the courage to ask it.

  “What did I do to make you hate me?” she asks, her voice shaking.

  “What are you talking about? You always talk such rubbish, Kate.”

  “I’m talking about the way you treat me.” Kate takes a deep breath. “As though you hate me.”

  Her mother looks at her with eyes like black bullets.

  “Do you really want to know?” she hisses, that old venom back in her voice now. “I’ll tell you. You aren’t your brother. And believe me, he’s worth ten of you.”

  Kate is stunned. Feels like she’s been punched in the stomach. “What do you mean a brother?” she almost whispers.

  “What I said. Now stop your whining and leave me alone! I’m tired. You’re making me feel ill.”

  Kate rises slowly from the faded pink armchair and walks out. She abandons her mother amongst her cheap knickknacks and overstuffed wardrobes without looking back.

  She has a brother.

  No name. No address. Nothing to hint that he exists beyond Emily’s words. Is it the truth, or the old girl’s bid to control to the end? Whatever, the words are out there. Therefore he exists.

  It is an end-shot of appalling virtuosity. From this moment on, every time she looks at a face in a crowd searching for a likeness, she will be forced to recall the angles of her mother’s face, the colour of her eyes, the curl of her mouth, or a familiar expression.

  Fighting anger and tears, she makes her way through a persistent drizzle and peak-hour traffic. The wheels of the car in front spray her windscreen with greasy slime. The wipers slap back and forth, leaving muck at both sides.

  Suddenly the car in front slams on its brakes and goes into a skid. It only takes a second to regain control, but her heart beats wildly. She slows. Recklessness will buy a plot alongside the old girl. No. Not alongside. Never that.

  Calmer now, her old journo instincts kick in, as does the hard little kernel that has never cracked under a lifetime of Emily’s hammering. She will return to her mother’s bedside in the morning with a list of questions. If she has a brother, she must find him or spend the rest of her life wondering. She will not give Emily that satisfaction. She needs facts. At that moment, she almost turns the car around, but her anger still burns. In the morning, she decides.

  It is dark by the time she swings into the car park at the Spit. If she cries, it will be self-pity, and as her mother always said, self-pity is for weaklings and weaklings get left behind.

  She locks the car, skirting past the café, where she can see Ettie’s lights blazing in the penthouse. If she is forced to speak to anyone, she knows she will scream. She runs down the ramp, jumps into her boat, and roars off without looking back.

  Just before she falls asleep, she hears wailing and wonders if the sound is coming from her own throat. She blindly feels for wetness under her eyes but finds her skin bone-dry.

  “Must be the wind in the casuarinas,” she thinks.

  At five she gets a call. It’s the night nurse. Emily had a fatal heart attack in the witching hour between 3 and 4 a.m.

  Kate throws the phone against the wall and lets out a howl of rage and regret. There is no going back. There never is.

  When Kate arrives at the café the next morning, Ettie asks if she is okay. She is silenced by a look of red-hot ferocity. She wants to tell Kate that unresolved bitterness turns on you, until you carry it like a scar. She wants to tell her that anger is pointless. She wants to tell her that if her mother is desperately ill, she must try to make peace. For her own sake, if not for Emily’s. If she’d known Kate for years, Ettie wouldn’t have hesitated to grab her by the scruff of her neck to march her back to her mother’s bedside to do her duty. Their friendship is still too new, though, and every so often frailties surface. Perhaps if they weren’t business partners she’d have been more inclined to take a risk. But the thought of seven days a week nursing a sullen offsider holds her back.

  She watches Kate tie on her apron, and work in a frenzy that has nothing to do with the growing summer holiday crowds.

  Kate attacks grease stains on the back deck with a steel wool, scouring so hard Ettie fears the timber is in danger of flaking away. The accounts are brought up to date and orders for new stock phoned through to suppliers. Island cooks are rallied to make a final effort to cash in on an anticipated last-minute rush for a great chutney to go with the ham or the perfect pickle to put under the tree as a gift. By late afternoon the café is polished to a glow and every dark corner is scraped hairpin clean. Kate nods at Ettie and goes home early without explanation or once mentioning that her mother is dead and she has to organise the funeral. Ettie, who has comforted and consoled so many over the years, hasn’t the faintest idea what to do.

  Just after closing, Sam calls in.

  “I’m flat out with everyone wanting their deliveries before Christmas,” he says. “Haven’t got a minute to go to the supermarket. Thought one of your takeaway curries would hit the spot.”

  Ettie, looking worried, waves him upstairs to her penthouse. She makes him a cup of tea, even though he’d prefer a cold beer, and tells him to sit down.

  “Kate’s mother is ill,” she explains. “She went to see her yesterday and something truly awful must have happened because she has barely said a word since and she didn’t go to see her today.”

  Sam says nothing.

  “Whether you like it or not, you’re her friend. She didn’t mean what she said about you and the Weasel. She’s ashamed of herself for even thinking it. So get over to Oyster Bay tonight with a good bottle of wine – not a six-pack – and get her to talk to you.” When he opens his mouth to speak, she cuts him off. “No ifs, no buts, that girl’s in a mess and she needs help. I can’t get through to her so you try. Okay?”

  “I was going to ask if she might appreciate one of your curries, Ettie, that’s all.”

  “I can assure you, she would hate one of my curries right now. But I’ll get you one to take home to have later.”

  “You’re the answer …”

  “Oh shut up and get moving. Here, take this bottle of red with you.”

  It is just past dusk by the time Sam makes his way across the open water and swings towards Oyster Bay. Not at all sure of his welcome. Behind him on the banquette, the bottle of wine barely moves. He riffles through his memory of his mother’s wise sayings, hoping he’ll come up with a nice little homily that will help with what lies ahead.
And for the first time in his life comes up blank. He’s on his own.

  He ties up at the pontoon as a strong sou’easterly peels loose sheets of bark from the trunks of spotted gums. They hurtle through the air and crash to the ground with a sound like bones snapping. He checks the ropes once more to make sure they’re secure. Grabs the wine and goes up the steps to Kate’s house at a rush to avoid being donged on the head by the debris.

  He won’t mention the distance that’s been between them for the last few days. He’ll open the batting by saying he needs some sound advice about buying Jimmy a Christmas present. Perfect, he thinks, knocking on the door. Terrible, he realises, the moment she flings it open with a look that makes his gonads shrivel.

  “Bad time to drop by, is it?” he mumbles. And right there in front of him, she bursts into tears. He gathers her into his arms and whispers soothingly.

  “My mother,” she sobs, “is dead.” She buries a face contorted by grief, and a large dose of anger, into the hollow of his shoulder until he picks her up and carries her to the sofa. “And … I have a brother,” she adds, in little angry hiccups. “Or so she said.”

  He finds a blanket in the bedroom and covers her legs and bare feet. In the kitchen he puts on the kettle. He searches for a tea bag but finds an array of canisters with such bizarre names he soon gives up on the idea. He opens a drawer looking for a corkscrew instead. Outside, the wind starts to howl, the bush crackles and whines. He finds a couple of water glasses and pours the wine.

  “It’s from Ettie’s private cellar,” he says, with a wry grin. “She told me she’d kill me if I brought a six-pack.”

  Kate tries to smile. She takes a sip and then another. Two seconds later, she gulps half the wine in one go. “I have so many questions. I left her, you know, to die alone. But I never thought she would. Die, I mean.” She finishes her wine and holds up the glass for a refill.