by Jenny Oliver
Matt sighed. ‘No. I went round last night, asked if he wanted to come away this weekend. No joy.’
‘Where you going?’
‘North Wales. Climbing,’ Matthew said, getting up and reaching across to the table behind him for sugar.
‘That’s really bad for you, you know.’
‘Climbing?’
‘No sugar. That much sugar.’
‘Yeah I know,’ he spooned in another teaspoonful. ‘But I only have it once a day. It’s my little treat.’
‘Wow, you really know how to live,’ she laughed.
Matthew shrugged a smile.
Annie closed her laptop and put it in her bag. Then, crossing her arms on the table, she leant forward and said, ‘So River likes climbing?’
Matt paused, the coffee cup at his lips. ‘No, not massively, but I’m persuading him, gently.’
Annie nodded and then sat back, picking up her cup and cradling it between her palms.
‘What?’ Matt said.
‘Nothing.’
‘What? Why are you looking at me like that?’
Annie took a sip of the thick bitter coffee. ‘Did you know he’s in a band?’
‘Christ yeah, it’s dreadful,’ Matt said under his breath.
‘That’s encouraging.’
‘No sorry, I don’t mean it like that. It’s just not my kind of music.’
Annie put her cup down and moved to stand up. ‘Just like climbing’s not his,’ she said.
Matt drained his espresso and stood up with her, ‘What are you getting at?’
‘Well. Who is it that’s trying to make this relationship work?’
Matt ran his tongue along the bottom of his top teeth.
‘And yet who is it that’s picking the activity?’
His mouth stretched into a you’ve-got-me grin and Annie smirked.
‘Where do you want this light hung then?’ he said with a roll of his eyes.
‘Over there in front of the counter,’ she said, giggling.
‘Got a ladder?’
‘In the back.’
‘Right.’
And Annie watched as the man who the previous weekend she’d seen named on the Sunday Times Rich List, sauntered off to go and get her ladder.
They spent the rest of the day working on the cafe. The newly turquoise counter surround had two little pawprints in it, where Buster had tried to stretch up and follow a brush stroke, that they left for posterity. The floor, where he’d subsequently left a trail of tiny footprints, had been scrubbed clean and Ludo was out the back with a bucket washing the furious dog’s paws. Martha, who’d had an about-turn since Annie’s apology, had nipped back to her house and returned with her collection of cake stands. All different types: some glass, some china patterned with trails of ivy, others painted with little birds. One particularly fancy one ‒ an all-over delicate silver filigree ‒ Annie placed in the new cabinet where it sparkled as it caught the sun. The others they arranged on the counter surface and on a shelf that Matt had made out of two old brackets they’d found out the back and a piece of driftwood.
In the afternoon, just as the sun came out, Annie’s mum appeared unexpectedly, carrying two shopping bags that she deposited on the table next to Annie and said, ‘I’ve made you some new curtains.’
‘Really?’ Annie asked, surprised. ‘I thought you were working this week?’
‘I am. I made them this morning. After my shift,’ she said it as if it was nothing to knock up a pair of curtains after working twelve hours at the hospital. That was what her mum did, she showed her affection in practical gestures and hated praise or acknowledgement of the fact.
Annie pulled out the cute half-curtains that would replace the tatty chequered ones in the window and held them up, delighted. Winifred had managed to find a white cotton that was patterned all over with little yellow dandelions, some with stalks and leaves, others just the feathery flowers. And along the bottom she’d stitched cream vintage lace, like bunting made of spiders’ webs.
‘Thank you,’ Annie said, going over to the window to hold the curtains against the glass, the cotton see-through in the sharp spring sunshine.
‘You can’t leave those marks on the wall,’ Winifred said, waving away Annie’s thanks and focusing instead on the dirty stains left by the missing pictures.
‘We don’t have time to repaint, Mum.’
‘Repaint?’ Her mother looked indignant. ‘Bit of Cif and a J-cloth and they’ll be clean in a jiffy. I’ll do it,’ she said, getting an apron, a bottle of Cif and some rubber gloves out of her bag like Mary Poppins. The whole thing was clearly completely premeditated but unmentionable.
Annie left her mum to it and glanced around for her next job. Martha was scrubbing the floor on her hands and knees with a tea towel wrapped round her hair like Cinderella, Ludo was clearing out the kitchen with a newly clean Buster bashing about with pans and tins and jars making an absolute racket, Holly had arrived an hour previously with a load of picture frames she didn’t need and was working with River to reframe some of the old black and white Cherry Pie Island photographs that had been dotted about on the walls. Buster, to whom Holly was second favourite only to Matthew, came bounding out of the kitchen, moving faster than Annie had ever seen him, and wound his way around and through Holly’s legs until she eventually picked him up and allowed him to snuggle into her neck.
As the dog was making himself comfortable, Annie examined Holly from a distance, tried to see if there was a baby bump underneath her sweatshirt. She decided there was no way she was pregnant. No way at all. Holly didn’t have long-term boyfriends. She had men who fell head over heels in love with her that she occasionally deigned to go for a drink with. She was terrified of commitment and hid it under a veneer of pickiness. Always had. Ever since her mum had left. The closest Holly got to a relationship was picking Buster up off the floor.
‘You OK?’ Annie asked, sidling up next to her, wondering whether to just come right out and ask whether she was with child.
Holly glanced up from where the dog was nuzzling her neck, a bit taken aback by the question, ‘Yes thanks, Annie.’
‘Good, good, just checking. Just checking,’ Annie said, and pretended to be more interested in the photographs on the table. Pictures which, when she did actually look at them properly, turned out to capture beautifully the history of the island.
There were photos of the men up ladders, picking the cherries, eight-piece hats on and braces, big wide grins for the camera. Others were of the women making the pies that used to be sold to visiting boats or boxed up and driven away in Cherry Pie vans to all the bakeries and corner shops. There was one of the cafe, Enid wearing a fifties jumpsuit, grey with cropped trousers, her hair set in black curls with a scarf tied in a bow on the top of her head, baby Martha in her arms, standing outside the gleaming windows of the brand-new cafe. Annie’s grandfather was standing next to her, and her father as a boy pulling a wooden duck on a string. Behind them she could just make out the cherry trees, some tall, craggy and old, some newly planted. The sycamore was barely visible. The area around the cafe was completely undeveloped and the orchard floor sprawled forth onto the rubble path; cowslips, daisies and dandelions scattered among the too-long grass. She took the photo from River as she looked over his shoulder and he waited silently as she stared at it, moved her fingers from each face.
‘That’s my dad,’ she said as she gave it back. ‘There, the little kid. That was my dad.’
River nodded.
‘It would have been cool if he’d seen this,’ she said, looking up at the renovations. ‘God, you really don’t know how much you’re going to miss someone till they’re gone,’ she said, then added, ‘Make the most of them while you have them.’
River looked at her with one brow raised, his expression exactly like his dad’s.
Annie smiled as innocently as she could, knowing she’d laid it on a bit thick, but feeling sentimental.
‘Let me
see!’ Her mother called, completely ruining the moment. ‘Bring it over here, let me see him.’
River took the photo over and her mum paused in her wall-scrubbing, held the corner of the picture between the finger and thumb of her rubber glove and said, ‘Oh he was handsome, even then. Such a handsome little boy.’
Annie walked away, without fail a just like Jonathan, what a perfect baby statement accompanied one of her mother’s reminiscences.
Then she paused when she heard, ‘Annie was a bonnie little thing. Cried and cried, but she was so pretty, all tiny and wrinkled and pink and lovely.’
River, who was clearly not used to such chat, mumbled something, took the photo and sloped back to the table covered in frames. Holly and Annie exchanged a smile.
And when she walked past Valtar, who was scraping dirt out of the grooves in the laminate tabletops and Gaffer-taping up the slits in the lino booth-seats, he gave Annie a wink and said under his breath, ‘She’s trying.’
‘I know.’ Annie nodded.
‘In both meanings of the word,’ muttered Martha as she walked past to empty her bucket. ‘Here, River, let me see that picture.’ She held out a hand for the photograph and he duly turned back to give it to her.
Martha sighed, bringing it right up close to her eye to study it in detail. ‘I think that’s my dad there, in the window, can you see?’ She passed the photo over to Annie who could just make out half a man’s head with wire spectacles.
‘I don’t know anything about your dad,’ Annie said, handing the picture back, not wanting to mention how she could barely make out the figure as Martha looked so hopeful.
‘No. Me neither. Just that he was desperately kind,’ Martha said, holding the photo back up to her face. ‘That’s all Mum and anyone said about him, very kind. I remember him being very gentle, but not massively talkative. He came home from work, read the paper, had dinner, went to bed. I’ve often wondered whether he was challenging enough for Mum but she was insistent that he was. And of course that he was desperately kind.’ Martha smiled, and handed the photo back to River who was waiting, clearly uncomfortable, not knowing what to do with his hands. ‘I didn’t know him well enough to tell you much more. He died when I was five. And you know what Enid was like.’ Martha sighed, exasperated, ‘Ask her anything about the past and she snapped shut like a mussel shell. So frustrating.’
Annie went back to the table of photos, flicked through them looking for more of people she recognised but came up short. ‘Maybe you’ll find something when you start clearing out Enid’s houseboat?’ she suggested.
Martha shook her head. ‘Have you seen it? It’s piled high. It’ll take me years to go through it. But actually, Jane Williams, you know from the boat next to Mum’s?’
Annie shook her head, she didn’t know the name.
‘She lives with her mother who has dementia, poor woman, won’t be here for long, poor old Jane does everything for her, anyway she’s offered to give me a hand. Mum left her some jewellery and God knows where it is in that shambles.’ Martha did a little snort, exasperation disguising any notion of how upsetting clearing her mum’s belongings was going to be. ‘Anyway, back to it,’ she said, collecting up her bucket and heading to the sink.
‘Hey, Annie,’ Holly called and nodded outside to where Matt, who had gone home to get his workbench and tools, was now out the front cutting down an old Victorian door panel for the kitchen that had been dragged out of the river years ago and left leaning up against the side of the boathouse. ‘He’s very handy,’ said Holly as she took the stack of photos from Annie and sorted through them to find another worth framing.
‘He is very handy,’ Annie added. And they both stood for a moment and watched as Matt pulled his sweatshirt off, taking his T-shirt with it to give a momentary glimpse of a set of golden-tanned abs.
‘You two are despicable,’ said Martha as she came back past with her bucket of clean water. ‘Completely despicable.’ But they watched, smirking, as she changed the direction of her floor-scrubbing so she could look out the window too.
Annie smiled, but there was only so long she could stare without looking obvious so, turning her back on the lovely view, she went over to the counter and crouched down to start sorting through all the junk underneath it. There were piles of old flyers for island events ‒ ones for Valtar’s Elvis nights at the pub and lots for bands playing at the lighthouse or at the club over the river, used notepads, pots of blunt pencils and Biros that didn’t work, boxes that when she opened them were filled with elastic bands, safety pins, a screwdriver with lots of different-sized heads, tape measures, corks, hairbands, old scissors and rolls of nearly finished Sellotape. ‘I take it this can all go in the bin?’ she shouted, holding up the box.
‘That was all Enid’s,’ Ludo shouted above his clattering.
Annie found a couple of pairs of shoes, an old cardigan, some dog-eared paperbacks and a pack of playing cards. Then, right at the back was a shoebox. A dead spider dropped on her hand as she pulled the box forward making her yell and tip back so she was sitting on the floor.
‘Everything OK?’ Holly called out.
‘Fine. Fine,’ said Annie, flicking the spider out of sight and resting the shoebox in her lap. She did a little laugh when she saw the Dolcis shoes logo and remembered a pair of hot-pink fur-lined pixie boots she’d begged for in the eighties, going in and trying them on and her mum saying she’d pay half. Annie had gone round the whole island for odd jobs ‒ she’d picked cherries, scrubbed boats, pulled up dandelions, cleaned cars ‒ and finally got her boots, in their white Dolcis box, in their black plastic Dolcis drawstring bag. It was a forgotten highlight of her childhood.
‘Mum?’ she shouted from where she sat on the floor. ‘What happened to my pink boots?’
‘Your brother took them,’ her mum called back.
‘He did?’ Annie frowned.
There was silence for a moment. ‘Gerty found them in the attic and wanted them.’
‘She did?’ Annie said, a note of triumph in her voice now.
‘Suzi wasn’t sure but, you know Gerty, no stopping her once she wants something.’
Annie held the lid of the box against her chest. Thinking of her niece in her pink fur-lined boots made her happier than anything to do with the cafe. She’d always been a bit worried that her brother would squash little Gerty’s spirit, but she should have had more faith.
Smiling, she looked down into the box and was surprised to see inside stacks and stacks of postcards, all lined up widthways like a Rolodex. Filed from old to new. The ones at the back browning, the edges frayed like they were well-thumbed. At the front they were shiny new from places like Tokyo, New York, Melbourne.
Annie took one from the back. Beautiful Cape Town it said on the front in a scrolling typeface and a picture of a sunset and fireworks and the shadow of Table Mountain.
River Walker Enid Morris, Dandelion Cafe.
Abseiled Table Mountain this morning. Had to do it early as not strictly allowed. Had lights on our helmets but the sun rose just as we were half way, most stunning thing I’ve ever seen. Made me feel tiny. Small as you are.
Matt (Dad)
The writing was worn. Like sticky hands had touched it over and over. Annie leant sideways so she could poke her head round the kitchen door.
‘Ludo?’ she said.
He looked up from where he was reshelving and organising.
‘Have you seen these before?’ Annie asked, holding the shoebox up at an angle so he could see inside.
‘Never.’
‘OK.’ She sat back. Buster, piqued by the idea of someone sitting at floor level, thumped over and lay himself down along the length of her outstretched leg. As the dog started snoring, Annie picked up the next postcard.
Patagonia, Chile. The Corcovado Volcano.
Ice climbing = harder than I thought. Broke wrist and can only use left hand ‒ excuse handwriting. View = life-changing.
Would like you t
o see it one day.
Matt (Dad)
Annapurna, Nepal
What that guy’s doing on the front, that’s what we did. Crazy fools.
It was fun. Maybe not quite as fun as I had thought.
Find myself missing you. Your mum sent me a pic. Walking ‒ well done! We’ll have you up a mountain before you know it.
Matt (Dad)
Annie slipped it back into place, then, carefully so she didn’t disturb the dog, did a quick check over the counter to make sure that Matt was still outside and River was still busy with the frames. She felt like she was reading someone’s diary.
Moving to the later ones she picked out a photo of cherry blossom in Tokyo.
Here on promotional tour. Tenth time. Tired. Blossom reminded me of home. I know you probably don’t think I think of it as home, but there you go. Neither did I.
See you at home, kiddo. Well done on your end-of-year report, your mum seems really proud. Sorry you were too busy to come to the phone.
Dad
‘Annie, have you got—’
At the sound of Matt’s voice, Annie rammed the lid back on the box and fumbled it back onto the shelf, hoiking herself up all flustered and guilty-looking. Buster jumped up, startled, and did one of his feeble barks.
‘OK?’ Matt asked, puzzled, scooping up the floundering pug.
‘Fine.’
‘What’s that?’ He pointed to the old shoebox, moving his head to stop the snuffling dog from licking his face.
‘Receipts.’ Annie rolled her eyes. ‘Enid kept everything!’
Matt laughed, still distracted by Buster’s unwanted affections. ‘The hoarder next door.’
‘Bit like that, yeah.’
‘God this dog is insatiable. Do you want him?’
‘What? Permanently?’ Annie asked, shocked, as she went to lift the dog away from him.
‘Er no!’ Matt said without thinking, keeping hold of the fat little pug so he was dangling mid-air between them.
Annie laughed, ‘Ah-ha, so you do like him!’
Matt raised a disdainful brow as he let her take the dog. ‘Let’s just say he’s growing on me.’
‘And there I was thinking you had a heart of steel.’
