Ship Ahoy! (A Cliffhanger Novel Book 3)

by T. J. Middleton

  ‘Audrey, calm down. By this time next week, it’ll be a different story.’ I picked up the car keys from the table. She started tapping her foot.

  ‘Where are you off to now?’

  ‘I have things to do Audrey, people to see, plans to set in motion. I’ll be back when I’m back. Maybe a little later.’

  ‘See?’ she said, her face going all flushed. ‘You’re doing it again. Leaving me at home wondering what on earth’s going on. Things to do, people to see. What things? What people?’

  I put my fingers to my lips. It was one thing to help her out. It was quite another to upset the natural order of things. I was Al, master forager, and she, she was where she should be, stuck in the homestead, making herself useful.

  ‘Now that you mention it,’ I said. ‘The carpet could do with a once over. Tell you what, after that, why don’t you bake us all a nice sponge cake for when I get back. We’ve got some very nice bilberry jam going at the moment.’

  I left before she could say another word. As I drove off I could hear something I hadn’t heard for years, the sound of Audrey kicking saucepans across the kitchen floor. Mrs B could hear it too no doubt. I knew I shouldn’t have, ‘cause it wasn’t funny, but I had to laugh.

  I drove to the department store. I had some shopping to do. New clothes for the coming cruise. Appearances matter on a boat like the Lady Di, like they did behind the Vanden Plas. You’ve to to look smart, respectable, it’s what they expect, that and the fascination of who they bloody are and what their wonderful offspring have achieved, besides leaving them in the lurch. Nothing for Audrey though, despite her pleas. I didn’t want her to have any excuse to got out of the cabin. The redder they were the less likely she’d want to wear them in public. I popped up to the ladies’ floor though, just on the off chance, but Trudi wasn’t there. I felt a bit let down. I quite fancied another crack at her.

  I bought some shirts, dropped the stuff in the car and went looking for some grub. Making those pasty sculptures had got me going. I hadn’t had a bite to eat since I’d got up. I wasn’t thinking about them as such, least not consciously, but then I saw them, all piled up on the counter of this bakery. They didn’t look quite as brilliant as hers, but then they wouldn’t would they? She hadn’t made them. But still, I felt the urge. I walked in. He was fussing behind the counter, a round little worry-wart, with one of those floppy white hats stuck on his bonce, to show us he was a baker. I mean I’d never have guessed otherwise, what with the fourteen different shaped loaves laid out behind him.

  ‘Good morning Master Baker’, I said, all loud and cheerful, reaching for my wallet. ‘I’ll have eight of your finest Cornish Pasties, if I may be so bold. ’

  He looked over to the pile beyond, moving his lips and counting.

  ‘That only leaves one,’ he said, a trifle put out. It wasn’t the best of starts, but I was in a good mood. Don’t ask me why. I opened my hand out, Mr fucking Generosity, that’s me.

  ‘I’ll take the lot then. Don’t want to leave a lonely boy on your hands.’

  As soon as I said it, it flooded back to me, that song. Mum used to play it all the time, hold me in her arms, swinging me about, her singing along to the words belting out, Oh what a lonely boy, Oh what a lonely boy, like she knew that was what I was going to be, knew it from the moment I started out. Christ. Master Baker scowled, like I’d said something rude. See, you try and be nice and they throw it back in your face.

  ‘What I meant was, what about my usual customers? What are they going to eat?’

  ‘What is this, quiz night? I don’t know what your usual customers are going to eat. And do I care?’ That didn’t help. But then it wasn’t meant to. He squeezed his nose with his fingers. Hygienic.

  ‘I do. They’re my regulars. They expect their Cornish Pasties. They have them for their lunch.’ He puffed his chest out, getting territorial. Just what I needed, a baker with attitude.

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry. Perhaps I need glasses.’ I peered closer. ‘It’s just that I can’t see any of them with the label, “This Cornish Pasty is reserved for his Honour the Mayor of Shithole-by-the Sea” or some such dignitary stuck on the side. Perhaps they’ve fallen off. Have you had any earthquakes here lately?’

  He didn’t say nothing, just shuffled his feet, looked across at the woman waiting behind me. Oh good. I had an audience.

  ‘No? Well then one is forced to ask oneself as a newcomer to this neck of the woods, if they are reserved, why are they on display at all? Just to confuse or make us interlopers feel unwanted? What about that pile of crumpets. Or those cream buns? Are they off limits too? I mean silly me. I come into a baker’s shop and expect to buy something stuck on the counter. I mean how ignorant is that? But then I’m just an illiterate peasant in from the country. I probably got straw sticking out my arse.’

  He took a deep breath.

  ‘Look, about the pasties. They’re not all reserved of course. You can have some of them.’

  I relaxed. He didn’t know it, but I was nearly home.

  ‘That’s very white of you I must say. How many would you suggest?’

  He thought he was getting away with it.

  ‘I can let you have five. Yes, five should be OK.’

  ‘Five. Right. And what am I going to tell the disabled kid on the bus that his chum in the leg irons sitting next to him can have one, but he can’t?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘The outing I’m buying for, a bus load of handicapped kiddies, not that we like to use that word, you understand. What am I going to say to them? That Eric can have one but Charlie can’t. Or shall I divide them up, like they don’t deserve a complete Cornish Pasty each, because they’re all paraplegics and that?’

  ‘No, I wouldn’t… ’

  ‘I mean it’s all very right and proper for your la-di-da customers with their two arms and two legs and everything else we all take for granted having their Cornish Pasties every bloody day of the week, rain or shine, oh yes, but when it comes a few disadvantaged kids going out for their one day by the seaside - Mr Bastard the Baker says no, piss off you retards, go and suck on some seaweed. Tell you what. You got a couple of mouldy sausage rolls left over from yesterday I can divvy up?’

  ‘‘Please. It never occurred to me that…’

  ‘No it didn’t, did it?’ I plonked the cold bag down on the counter. ‘I want them wrapped up individually if you don’t mind. You can leave the last one out for me to sample while I’m driving them down to the beach. Find out what your regulars will be missing. And you can throw in a bagful of doughnuts gratis as a personal donation.’

  He couldn’t wrap them up fast enough and get me out the shop. I left swinging the bag high, dead chuffed. Eight Cornish Pasties kept in the cold bag could do for Audrey’s lunch in our cabin, until we got shot of her, though knowing her she wouldn’t be able to resist belting down two or three straight off. Still she wasn’t getting any steward service, whatever. I hadn’t told her that yet. She’d find out soon enough.

  Back in the car park, I got in the Citroën, started up the engine, waiting for it to rise up. It’s lovely the way the old French Citroëns do it, though I can’t see the point of it. I mean what’s it meant to do, lifting up like that, and if it was so important all those years ago, why isn’t it important any longer? Alice Blackstock says it was all about your average Frenchman’s fixation with Frog leg-over and grabbing it whenever the opportunity arose, but if it was all about that, it wouldn’t take so bloody long would it, it would shoot up like a rocket. And a lot further.

  After it had done its thing I eased the car out of the parking area, the bag of pasties and doughnuts on the passenger seat. Waiting at the exit, I thought I might as well do as I said would, and sample one of Master Baker’s Cornish pasties. I wanted to try them out before I got home, because walking back I’d been thinking, if they was really good, rather than wasting them on Audrey, who frankly wouldn’t know a true Cornish Pasty from something out of Belgium, I’d
freeze the lot of them and tuck into them whenever I felt like it, while I was sculpting or something. Audrey could make do with a couple of tins of corned beef and a tin-opener.

  I opened up the bag, fished around and brought one out. I was waiting for this poxy Volvo estate to pass by, when I bit into it, careful as I did so, not to get any crumbs on the seat. If it’s one thing I can’t stand in a vehicle, it’s crumbs on the seat. I don’t know what it was, did I actually taste it or did I see it, the speck of tell-tale orange out of the corner of my eye, vivid like a ginger pubic hair floating in a bowl of custard? Actually I don’t think it was neither of those. I think I smelt it, the moment my teeth broke open the pastry, the unmistakeable stink of CARROT. Whatever, one bite into that crust, and out it all came, meat, potatoes, the diced unmentionable, splat, straight out, not only onto the windscreen, but the steering wheel, and much of the dashboard, the rest of the bastard dropping down between my legs and onto the seat.

  Not surprisingly the shock of it all upset my equilibrium. Trying to lift myself up to dig the fake pasty pollution out from the crotch area, I inadvertently pressed the accelerator pedal, sending the Citroën lurching forward, and snagging Madame Volvo in the rear. The way she jumped out the car, pointing to her little darling in the back seat holding back her nose bleed ( WELL SHE SHOULD HAVE WORN THE COMPULSORY SAFETY BELT SHOULDN’T SHE MADAM, LIKE THEY HAVE TO IN SAFTETY-CONSCIOUS SWEDEN ) anyone would think I’d her done some serious damage, but a cracked tail light, that’s all it was, that and a bent fender and the blood on the upholstery. But out she jumps, calling me all kind of names that her little darling shouldn’t be aware of for at least another two years, and certainly not on the way to afternoon ballet school, like why the fuck didn't I look where I was going, what was I doing anyway driving that affected piece of French crap, and that I would be hearing from her husband in due course, who happened to work for the Highways and Byways Department and was very thick with the Deputy Police Constable. Marvellous aren’t they, women drivers, so self-reliant.

  I rolled out the driver’s door.

  ‘I’m terribly so sorry madam,’ I said, bending double and clutching my stomach hard, ‘ But I’ve think I’ve just been poisoned. ’

  ‘Poisoned?’ She stopped in mid rant, came forward.

  ‘It’s that baker down the road, …’ I pointed to the bag on the seat. ‘I had one of his effing pasties this morning pardon my French and….oh I’m coming over all giddy.’

  I leant against the Citroën bonnet. It had gone back down. Me, I was feeling pretty chippy down below as a matter of fact. She’d make a good nurse.

  ‘Baker?’ she said. She looked inside the Citroën, taking in the paper bag. ‘Angus McWhirtle’s?’

  ‘That’s the one. I should have known with a name like that. If you’ve bought anything there in the last couple of days, for God’s sake …’

  I doubled up again, honked the last flecks of pasty down onto her open toed sandals.

  ‘Oh dear,’ she says, jumping back and trying not to mind, ‘You poor man. Anything I can do?’

  I clutched my stomach again. Was there anything she could do?

  ‘Is the hospital nearby? I think Casualty should take a look.’ I dry retched. She kept her feet well away from that one.

  ‘It’s just up the road, left after the second roundabout. Do you want me to drive you?’

  I smiled, weak but noble, like Admiral Nelson on HMS Victory.

  ‘No. You take care of the little ballerina there. We don’t want to get any more blood on her tutu do we? I’ll be fine. If you could just get your car out the way. Volvo Estate eh. Marvellous aren’t they? So safe. ’

  And she does it, bless her, forgets all about the light and the fender and Darcy Bussel Junior’s nose bleed and pulls the Volvo onto the side of the road. By the time she’s remembered the damage I’ve caused, I’m round the first roundabout and cruising down the street where Master Angus McWhirtle carries out his back-street abominations. I park the car one street away, clean myself with Gerald’s poxy handkerchief, and step out. And he’s still there, fussing in his apron and his prat hat. I get out the car, open the door, and slap the bag on the counter.

  ‘Angus! Remember me? The eight-Cornish-Pasty man, what your regular customers can’t get enough of? Tell me, is that a wedding cake behind you?’

  He turned to take a proud look.

  ‘You noticed that. Yes. For tomorrow’s wedding. Lovely family. Known her since she was knee high.’

  ‘Marvellous. All the usual ingredients has it? Flour, eggs, stuff like that?’

  ‘With an almond cream filling. We make a very superior wedding cake.’

  ‘No carrot in it then?’

  ‘Carrot?

  ‘Yes, you know, those long tapering things, the colour of your hair.’

  ‘No, of course not any carrot.’ He looked at his last customer who was hurrying out the door.

  ‘No. Silly me. Of course not. I mean what self-respecting baker would put carrot in a wedding cake? And these doughnuts here? I take it those are carrot free too, just strawberry jam and what-not.’

  ‘Of course. Look what is this?'

  ‘And your regular customers, what buy these pasties. I mean they’re not disadvantaged or anything, like my young boys, lost the sense of their taste buds or something. I mean, I know my kids are not all a hundred drachmas to the Euro, but still…’

  I took out the half-bitten pasty, opened it up a bit further.

  ‘See that? Eric nearly put it in his mouth. He’s a sensitive boy at the best of times.’

  He peered closer.

  ‘What’s the problem?’ I pointed. It looked like something Sigourney Weaver had been having trouble with.

  ‘The aforementioned vegetable,’ I said. ‘Carrot, what every other article of pastry in your emporium has managed to avoid, that’s the problem.’

  ‘Is he allergic to carrot?’

  ‘No. He’s allergic to something being called a Cornish Pasty when it isn’t.’

  He stepped back, looked me in the eye.

  ‘I didn’t call them Cornish Pasties.’

  ‘I’m sorry?

  ‘I didn’t call them Cornish Pasties. You did. I just call them pasties.’

  I cleared my throat I had to get this right.

  ‘Excuse me, but didn’t I enter these premises and taking out my wallet say, I‘ll have eight of your finest Cornish Pasties and didn’t you started arguing the toss about how many I could or could not have? You didn’t say, I am terribly sorry kind sir but these are not Cornish Pasties as might first appear, but are in fact Pillock Pasties that I knock up for the pig-ignorant wallabies who should know better, did you? No. You let me buy them thinking they was proper, bone fide Cornish pasties, all the while knowing they were not.’

  ‘Of course I knew they were not.’

  ‘You did?

  ‘Only bakers in Cornwall are allowed to call their pasties Cornish.’

  The nerve of the man. He was standing there, not a flicker of concern on his face.

  ‘So where’s the warning that says “Beware! Only Pillock Pasties for sale here? If you want Cornish ones fuck off to Truro.”’

  ‘I don’t need a sign. We’re not in Cornwall, and therefore, they can’t, by definition, be Cornish. It’s the law. ’

  He smiled, dead chuffed with himself.

  ‘Is it? I didn’t know that.’

  ‘Obviously.’ Then he added. ‘Though in all respects my pasties are Cornish pasties apart from the fact that they’ve been made in Dorset. Bloody stupid really. I mean what’s so special about Cornwall?’

  He sneered. What’s so special about Cornwall? He might as well have been dancing on her grave.

  ‘My mum was Cornish,’ I said quietly. ‘Very proud of it. She’s dead now.’

  He looked worried.

  ‘I didn’t mean…’

  ‘Very proud of her past, her heritage, Land’s End, the Cornish Floral Dance, King Arthu
r. He invented the Cornish Pasty did you know, King Arthur, had that Queen Guinevere knock them up on the Round Table so the knights all had something nourishing to gnaw on while they were galloping about chasing after the Holy Grail. Very firm about what the ingredients had to be, he was. Well he would be wouldn’t he, being King, hung the recipe round her apron so as she wouldn’t make a mistake - a sort of pastity belt if you like. And Lo, it read, let there be approximately twenty per cent of uncooked minced beef in my Cornish pasty and let there be also equal proportions of potato and swede and chopped onion, and let them be mixed thoroughly and let you season the mixture lightly with salt and pepper, and encase it all in a strong but pliant pastry that when cooked can be dropped from the top of Tintangel Castle onto the rocks below with nere a crack in sight, but never ever, under any circumstances, not even if Sir Lancelot promises you a go on his pogo-stick, add any of that bastard vegetable the carrot in it, because carrot reminds me of horrible ginger haired Scotsmen who eat horse food for breakfast and don’t know SHIT FROM PUDDING!’

  He was looking a little pale. I took out my pen, held it under his nose. ‘Want a borrow of my biro, to write it down on the back of your hand?’

  ‘Look if you don’t leave I’m going to…’

  ‘OK Tell you what. You know best. You eat them.’

  I walked across, flipped the closed sign shut and bolted the door. He was trying to dig his mobile out of his pocket when I got back. I whipped off his hat dropped the phone in, tipped some cream buns in for good measure, gave it all a good shake.

  ‘Now then.’

  I laid them all out. They were big, bloated, like something you find washed up dead on the beach.

  ‘You can’t make me eat that lot..’

  ‘That’s what Eric said from his wheelchair. But he didn’t make them did he? Go on. The sooner you start the sooner you finish.’

  I broke one in half and chucked it over. He stuck it in his mouth, started in. He had cheeks like a chipmunk. Chomp chomp chump. After he’d finished number one I pushed number two along. If anything that went down faster than the first. Number three was a different story. It stayed in his mouth a long, long time, like cement going round in a mixer, from one side to the other. He asked me for a glass of water, but I said no, washing them down would make it too easy. He had to remember how horrible they tasted, understand the wrong he’d done. Number four I sat on the counter and sampled a couple of his macaroons and half a lardy cake,, but frankly, the way he was holding his stomach and his poor eyes pleading with me, completely put me off. I let him off the fifth and sixth, just asked him to jump and down on them till they was mulch on the floor, then had him roll about in it like the dirty dog he was. I put the last one back in the bag. Audrey could have it for her tea that night. It would make me feel good, seeing her eat filth like that. I flipped the sign back and walked out the door.