by Jenny Oliver
‘You wanted to see me?’ he said, nose in the air, on guard. The tapping of the cigarette packet ruining his aloofness.
‘Ludo, chill out, I’m not going to fire you.’ Annie frowned. ‘We’re in this together. We go down together, I’m afraid.’
She’d closed the place for two days in an attempt to spruce it up a bit. The clock and the pictures were in the bin, the ceiling scrubbed, the windows washed, and Martha was currently painting the wooden counter with a bright turquoise paint that had been on sale in Homebase. Stacked up by the window was a collection of finds that Annie’d made on a panicked walk around the island; while her head was busy questioning the stupidity of her decision to keep the place, her heart was getting secretly excited at all the junk that had been discarded down by the river that might work in a retro, shabby chic vibe, maybe. Her prize possession was the cabinet River was hanging, scrubbed bare wood with panels of glass, some of it cracked, that someone had lined with wallpaper, red flowers on faded gold.
She didn’t have the money to invest a lot. If she was going to try to make it work then it meant taking some time off from her own business; paying the rates on the cafe, investing in stock and wages would pretty much put paid to her savings. The only thing she could think to keep the money coming in was to take on her own jobs and work on them whenever she had a spare moment, like now. Which wasn’t actually a spare moment but she could work on her laptop while keeping an eye on the renovations.
‘I’m thinking the best we can do is make this the aesthetic,’ she’d said, waving her arm at the moulded plastic seats and chipped lino tables. ‘Retro greasy spoon, but with a hint of glamour. Kind of plastic faded glory.’
Martha had raised a brow, dubious.
‘Thank you, Martha, very helpful,’ Annie had said with a shake of her head. ‘If anyone has anything they think might suit, by all means...send it my way.’
‘My mum’s got a light that came with our house. She hates it. It’s in the shed,’ River mumbled, playing with the cuffs of his sweatshirt.
‘See, perfect. Ask her if we can have it, of course. But that sounds very interesting. Thank you, River.’
Martha raised a brow again.
Annie raised one back at her. And Martha had walked away smirking.
That morning Ludo had struggled in with a huge framed poster in his hands. Backing in through the door he’d smacked it down, his arms shaking with fatigue. ‘This,’ he said, leaning on the frame. ‘This is my father’s picture. He left to me and my flat is too small. It would work on this wall, I think.’ He pointed to the wall on the left that was now empty apart from the clean white squares where all the dreadful pictures used to be.
River helped him hold it up and Annie came round to have a look, anxious to see what it would be of. Imagining all sorts of aesthetic disasters. But she found herself sighing with delight. It was an old advert for Iberia airways. The background was yellow, dotted with pale-pink flowers and the main illustration was of two Spanish flamenco dancers. She was in red with ruffles on her sleeves and he wore an outfit like a matador, a brooding stare and chiselled jaw. They were drawn like they’d danced into the poster in the fifties.
‘It’s amazing.’
‘It’s a loan,’ Ludo had said.
‘Thank you.’
Now sitting in front of her he still looked unsure. ‘I thought you were going to fire me. I thought I would have to take my picture back.’
Annie shook her head. ‘I don’t want to fire you.’
‘But?’ Ludo said, eyes narrowing.
Annie squirmed in her seat. ‘I just want to, maybe, change what you cook.’
‘You don’t like my cooking?’
‘No, I do like your cooking. I just wonder why you’re cooking what you’re cooking.’
‘What’s wrong with what I’m cooking?’
‘Well it’s…’ She paused, searched for the right words. ‘It’s very English.’
‘That’s because we are in England.’
‘Yes but you’re Spanish.’
‘I know I am Spanish.’
‘Well I thought maybe you might like to cook something Spanish.’
He smacked the table with his hand and made Annie jump. ‘Of course I want to cook bloody Spanish but no one tells me to cook anything Spanish. They want the eggs and the bacon.’
‘Well I was thinking maybe we could keep some of that but, you know, maybe…’ He terrified her. His expression fierce, Latin, fiery. ‘Cut back on everything else, make it simple. Brunch menu with eggs and bacon and whatever else, mushrooms and stuff. And then a tapas menu. Chorizo, Serrano ham, little anchovies...’ She tried to think of foggy memories of holidays to Spain. She’d barely had a day off in the last eight years and anytime spent lying in the sun nibbling on tapas felt like an unimaginable luxury. ‘You’ll know better than me.’
Martha had stopped in the aisle. ‘They won’t eat that.’
‘Who?’ Annie held her hands out wide. ‘No one comes in here, Martha! As far as I can see as long as we keep the bacon sandwich and the cherry pie, we don’t have anything to lose.’
Martha shrugged and walked away.
Annie shook her head, furious that she seemed to be blocking her at every move. ‘What do you want me to do, Martha?’ she said to the older woman’s back. ‘If you have any better ideas then I really want to hear them. I have no idea what I’m doing so, at the moment, I have to either go on instinct or some cafe expert needs to walk in and tell me what to do. But it can’t stay as it is, Martha. It can’t. It’s not making any money.’
‘And whose fault is that?’ Martha said, hands on hips.
Annie swallowed.
‘Mine I take it?’ Martha asked, her voice sharp. ‘I’ve worked here for forty years, ever think about that? Has it even crossed your mind what this place means to me? Meant to my mother? And you come charging in here, changing it all around, threatening to close us down if we don’t do what you say. You’re a lovely girl, Annie, but what do you know about running a cafe? Have you even thought to ask me? Maybe it hasn’t been a roaring success, but I’ve kept it here. I’ve survived. I’ve listened to your bloody brother and his talk about developing it. Like he’s been waiting for my mother to pop her clogs. Have you asked me anything, Annie? Or have you just given me a bloody paintbrush and some bloody awful paint?’
Annie sat almost quivering under Martha’s thunderous gaze. The older woman’s eyes moistened suddenly, making Annie want to just suck back in the last few days and change everything. Ask Martha to sit with her and think of ideas, draw up plans, take her to Homebase to see what colour she would have preferred out of the bashed, reduced paint cans.
‘Shit,’ Ludo muttered under his breath as Martha shook her head and stormed off to the bathroom out the back. ‘You in trouble now.’
Annie put her head in her hands. What had she been thinking? How could she have upset Martha? Martha who had been the one to serve her the cherry pie and the huge knickerbocker glories while Enid had told her stories. Martha who’d washed the grit and mud out of her hands when she’d fallen out the sycamore tree. Martha who’d added some dry comment as she’d served her dad his coffee and made him chuckle, deep and loud. Martha who’d turned when she’d nipped in at the back of Enid’s funeral and nodded her head in silent greeting.
‘Good luck,’ Ludo said, as Annie shuffled herself out from the booth and started her tentative walk of apology out to the yard.
Martha was sitting on the section of wall that had crumbled into a perfect bench shape. Her hands clasped in her lap, she was looking down at the damp grass and the old paving stones, the dandelion leaves poking through the cracks.
‘I’m sorry,’ Annie said, wrapping her arms around herself. The air was cool, still plump with rain, but in the snippets of sun was the remembered promise of summer.
Martha didn’t reply.
‘I’m sorry, it was really thoughtless of me. I should have asked for your advice.’
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Martha rubbed the top of one thumb with the other. ‘No, you shouldn’t. Look at what I’ve done to the place. You’re right. It isn’t good enough. It hasn’t been for some time and I know that. I’m not stupid. I think…’ She paused, looked up at Annie. ‘I got too worried that it would close. Stupid. Far too sentimental for an old woman.’
Annie didn’t say anything. Instead she walked over and sat on the cold stone wall next to Martha. In the quiet she watched a trail of ants make their way up and down the grooves of the pavement slabs.
‘It was my mother’s and I miss her. She was a mad old thing, but I miss her.’
Annie closed her eyes for a second, tried not to allow the creeping sadness of her own loss overtake her. This island was her father. Everywhere she looked, there he was. His ashes were scattered under the bloody sycamore tree behind her. His gaze was inescapable, and what he would think fuelled almost her every decision. She thought about him frowning down disapprovingly because she’d upset Martha. Enid was probably with him, frowning too.
‘She liked you a lot,’ Martha said, turning to look at Annie.
‘Enid?’ Annie asked, surprised.
‘You and Holly. She thought you were both marvellous. She wouldn’t hear a bad word against you, snapped at anyone who came in here for a gossip. And did you know, Holly would walk her here every morning because she refused to have a cane or a wheelchair?’
Annie shook her head, almost with disbelief. She knew so little of what went on here now, and found herself envious of how the community had changed and morphed and grown without her.
‘Enid would hold onto Holly’s arm and Holly would walk her here, and the whole thing was a great pretence that Holly couldn’t survive without one of our coffees in the morning. Oh and by the way, have you noticed she’s not drinking coffee at the moment?’
Annie frowned, ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
Martha shrugged, ‘Nothing, probably.’ And then made a show of patting her tummy.
‘Martha, Holly hasn’t had a boyfriend for years.’
‘You don’t need a boyfriend to have a baby, Annie.’
‘No. There’s no way she’s pregnant. She’s probably just cutting out caffeine. She’s a control freak. She wouldn’t be that careless.’
‘If you say so.’ Martha stood up, brushed the dirt and dust from the back of her skirt as Annie was still mulling the idea over, incredulous. ‘I do think you’re doing a good job,’ Martha went on. ‘I think my pride just took a bit of a knock. Come on, it’s cold out here.’
Annie stood up and said, ‘I should have talked to you more about it all.’
‘Well maybe we can start now?’ Martha said and started to walk back to the kitchen. ‘I hate the paint colour.’
Annie smiled and rolled her eyes. ‘OK. How about, if we make any money we can buy some different paint?’
‘That’s a good start.’
Back inside, Ludo was hovering by the door waiting nervously for them to come back.
‘Everything it is OK?’ he whispered to Annie as Martha marched straight past him to pick up her paintbrush.
‘Yeah, it’s fine.’ She nodded, feeling like she needed another coffee or a quick shot of vodka.
Ludo sighed with relief as they walked together back to the booth. ‘Good. I do not like the arguing. But I do like this tapas idea,’ he said. ‘I like it a lot. It is brave. And I tell it to River. River!’ he shouted over to where River was struggling to hang the cabinet. ‘You like this idea too, yes?’
‘Yes, Ludo!’ he shouted back.
Martha snorted under her breath like a disgruntled horse in the back of the room.
Annie, who was wrapping her big blue cotton scarf round her neck in an attempt to get warm, looked back at her, eyebrows raised.
‘OK, OK.’ Martha held up her hands with a smirk, the paintbrush dripping on the plastic sheet she had covering the floor. ‘I’ll try and be good.’
‘Thank you,’ Annie called and then, looking back at Ludo asked, ‘Do you two get on?’
‘Me and Martha?’
‘No, River?’
‘Ah, yes. He’s good. But struggling with his father.’ Ludo shrugged, popping a cigarette out of the packet. ‘He say he shouldn’t have buggered off. I say—’ he held his hands up. ‘Who knows the story. It is all grey. Me, I’m here because I have a daughter because I was a little wild with the English girls. And now to see my daughter as I would like I cannot go home to Spain. Life is choices, no? But he thinks it is all black and white.’ He put the cigarette between his lips. ‘You know he’s in a band? Maybe you could have it play here. It’s OK, quite loud. But I think they can play some things that aren’t loud. Ask him.’ Then Ludo got up from the seat and headed outside for a fag. ‘I will think on the tapas. Have a menu for you tomorrow.’
‘Thanks, Ludo,’ she said, turning back to look at River. Watched as he heaved the cabinet into place and then stood back to straighten it. When he glanced over his shoulder and saw that she was watching him his cheeks went bright pink. ‘This OK?’ he mumbled.
Annie nodded. He scuttled away like a hermit crab to help Martha with the turquoise paint. Annie looked at the list on her computer that had things like ‒ insurance, new roof cost?, flat upstairs revamp, rotten windows, new kitchen ‒ and ticked off tapas and cupboard, the most minor items on it. The flat upstairs didn’t even bear thinking about. It was a wreck and the roof was definitely leaking. But for the time being she was going purely cosmetic. She was going to block everything else out and just get some customers through the door.
It felt foolhardy and ill-conceived as plans went, but anything more meant a much bigger commitment.
And that, she just couldn’t give.
But it didn’t stop her from feeling a bit sick when she thought back to the end of her conversation with Martha. Just before they’d walked into the kitchen, Martha had put her hand on Annie’s shoulder and said, ‘I’m proud of you for doing this.’
‘For doing what?’ Annie had asked, then joked, ‘Repainting?’
Martha had sighed, ‘For not walking away, you idiot. For trying. You know what it means, don’t you?’
Annie had swallowed, given a slight shake of her head.
‘It means you have courage.’
Courage.
Sitting at the table, looking at the list on her laptop, at all the mammoth things that needed doing that she was ignoring, she didn’t feel like she had courage at all. Instead she felt a bit like a fraud.
Chapter Eight
As Annie stared at her computer screen, she felt a nudge against her leg and looked down to see Buster the pug shuffling about trying to make himself comfortable, pushing her legs out of the way with his squashed-in face.
‘That was where he used to sit, with Enid.’
Annie looked up to see Matthew standing next to the table, his expression curious, as if he’d caught her in a world of her own.
‘Everything OK?’ he asked.
‘Fine,’ Annie said quickly, shutting the lid of her laptop.
He made a face like he wasn’t quite sure he believed her, but he’d let it go, and asked instead, ‘Can I sit here?’
‘You know we’re closed,’ Annie said, feeling surprisingly pleased for the distraction, and the person distracting her.
He replied with a shrug and a half-smile. ‘I don’t know where else to go for coffee.’
‘The machine’s off.’
‘I don’t know where else to go for breakfast.’
‘There’s no food.’
‘I don’t know where else to go to sit down.’
‘Well in that case…’ She gestured to the vacant seat in front of her and then turned to look back towards the kitchen where Ludo was on his phone and smoking a cigarette out the window. ‘Ludo! What are you doing?’
‘I’m thinking. About the menu.’
Annie rolled her eyes. ‘Can you make coffee while you think?’
‘Ca
n I make coffee while I think…’ He scoffed. ‘This is a technical, difficult thought process.’ The YouTube video he’d been loading suddenly burst out at full volume and he scrabbled around trying to silence his phone.
Finally turning it off he said, ‘Yes, I can make coffee.’
Matt was smirking. ‘I feel honoured.’
‘So you should,’ Annie laughed.
Matt sat back and folded his arms. He’d clearly come straight in from the river again, dressed in sludge-green tracksuit bottoms and a dirty white sweatshirt all misshapen at the neck, his kit bag on the floor between his feet, a battered Evian bottle on the seat next to him.
‘Nice outfit,’ she said, looking him up and down.
‘I thought I’d dress up specially,’ he said, eyes glinting.
‘It’s the kind of outfit you could do some decorating in,’ she said.
‘D’you think?’
Annie nodded. ‘Perfect for painting, hanging pictures, lights…’ She gestured towards the flower-covered chandelier.
‘What’s that doing here?’ Matt asked, sitting up and staring over at the light.
Annie shrugged. ‘River said it was in his shed.’
‘I bought that.’
‘You did?’
‘For his mum. For Pamela.’
‘Oh.’ Annie made a face. ‘Sorry.’
Matthew blew out a breath that made his hair flick up at the front. ‘I never thought she liked it.’
Annie looked over at the gold ceramic monstrosity. ‘Well it’s perhaps not to everyone’s taste.’
Matthew laughed. ‘I was only eighteen when I bought it. God, that was all my money at the time.’ He sat back, ran his hands through his hair, pushing it back from where it kept flopping over his eyes.
River came over with the coffees, slid them onto the table without really looking at either of them.
‘Hey,’ said Matt.
River made a noise between a grunt and a hi and walked off.
‘Things haven’t got any better?’ Annie asked, the answer clearly obvious.
