by Wells, Nicky
A great peace descended on me, and I could breathe more easily. I felt like I had come home.
I didn’t know how long I had sat there, on my suitcase, probably looking slightly odd, before the rumbling of my tummy abruptly reminded me that it was definitely lunchtime now. Satisfied that I would be able to take in this vista again later that day, and the following day, and the day after that, I retraced my steps until I reached the friendly-looking little coffee shop that I had spotted earlier on a street corner. It purported to be Van Halen’s, and I was thoroughly intrigued.
Chapter Forty-Six
The door closed behind me, jauntily jingling the little bell attached to the top of the door jamb. I was instantly enveloped by the fragrant smell of strong, sweet tea and gulped greedily; I was gasping for a cuppa. This isn’t the time to start feeling homesick, I scolded myself.
Selecting a spot by the window, I lumbered through the assortment of odd chairs and sturdy tables, feeling like a clumsy hulk. I deposited my luggage in a corner behind my table and gratefully sat down on a blue-and-red striped wooden chair with a blue-and-red frilly cushion strapped to the seat.
Instantly, the waitress bustled over to speak to me, issuing the obligatory “Moin” by way of conversational opening gambit. She was in her mid-fifties, I guessed, although her hair was mostly white. But her eyes were a piercing, sparkling blue, her skin looked rosy and fresh, and she wore a comfy sweater with faded jeans and trainers.
“Moin,” I shot back proficiently but added quickly, “I don’t speak much German yet. Do you speak English by any chance?”
The waitress wiped the table with a white-and-blue checked cloth that looked clean and starched, even after she was done. Satisfied that all was tidy, she sat down with me thoughtfully, eyes a-sparkle.
“You must be Frau Penhalligan,” she offered in flawless English. “I’m Frau Fanhaalen, I own the tea shop. Willkommen.” And she extended a hand for me to shake.
My mind absorbed these nuggets of information. First of all, I hadn’t been prepared for the island information network and the fact that my arrival would be so noticed. Moreover, the teashop had nothing to do with the rock band, Van Halen, of course—how could it have? Van Halen was the owner’s name, pronounced Fan-Haalen. And evidently the lady wasn’t a waitress, she was the owner.
Frau Van Halen was expecting some kind of response, so I hastily greeted her back.
“Hi. Nice to meet you. Yes, I’m Frau Penhalligan.” I laughed uncertainly. “But please call me Sophie.” I clapped my hand on my mouth. “Sorry,” I uttered from behind my fingers, “That was really rude. You don’t even know me. Sorry.” I had remembered, too late, that the German code of etiquette was very specific on formalities.
Frau Van Halen simply giggled and shook her head. “What a great idea,” she assured me. “So much easier than all our formal stuff. Call me Greetje.”
“Greetje,” I repeated uncertainly. “That’s a nice name.” Doh. Inane comment alert.
“Thanks,” she said simply. “I like it, too.” Seeing my discomfiture, she laughed again. “I know what you mean,” she elaborated. “It must sound very unusual to you, my name. I lived in London for a few years, you see. I was always coming across people struggling with my name. And of course, I found plenty of interesting names over there. Like…” She scrunched up her forehead, trying to recall. “Like Tamsin, and Wynona.”
She had lived in London for a few years. That would explain her firm command of my native language. With a bit of luck, I had found myself an ally who could help me settle in. It also explained the ease with which she offered a familiar form of address.
“How did you know who I am?” I decided to find out, gauging the efficiency of the island communication network. Greetje laughed again.
“You’ll have to get used to this,” she warned me. “We’re a small and very close community. A single English woman, on the ferry, with two big suitcases…and nobody has a reservation for her to stay anywhere… Well, you’ll get noticed.”
I swallowed, and Greetje patted my hand. “It’s not as bad as it sounds. We’re nice people here, we look out for each other. And when I saw you coming down the road with your suitcases, I hoped you’d stop by. Else I would have found you somehow. You know, for a gossip and some news about your own island…”
Before I could reply to this invitation, my tummy gave a really loud rumble.
“How terribly rude of me,” Greetje exclaimed. “You didn’t come in here for a chat, you must be hungry. What can I get you?” She proffered a menu which I dutifully perused but couldn’t really do very much with.
“What can you recommend?” I asked instead.
“Nun denn,” she muttered. “First day on the island…just having come across the sea… How about something traditional? My Fischbrötchen are very good. Bread rolls with fish, with potato salad and greens on the side.”
That sounded delightful, and I could feel my mouth watering. I nodded eagerly, temporarily unable to speak.
“And a nice cup of tea?” Greetje wrote it down, shooting me a quick glance by way of confirmation.
I nodded again. “Heavenly,” I concurred, assuming that she was making a concession to my own island heritage.
“Comin’ right up,” Greetje issued energetically and in a surprisingly authentic accent, jumping to her feet swiftly. I settled back and let things happen.
Within a couple of minutes, Greetje was a back with a tray laden with food. The Fischbrötchen was without a doubt the most enormous helping of fish roll that I had ever seen. On a separate plate, there was a lovely fresh green salad and a heap of potato salad.
“Tuck in,” Greetje encouraged, seeing my hungry look. “I’ll bring your tea through as well. Mind if I join you in having lunch?” She was off again before I could respond. She was definitely my kind of person, and I felt drawn to her forthrightness and her cheer.
Greetje returned once more with her own lunch and with a tray bearing a big teapot, two cups and saucers, a dish of amber-colored lumps that had to be sugar, and a pitcher of milk. She sat down and smiled at me. I couldn’t speak as I was greedily eating.
“Hope you don’t mind?” Greetje reiterated once more, seeking final confirmation. I swallowed and cleared my mouth.
“No, of course not, it’s lovely to chat. But aren’t you busy?”
Greetje laughed again. She laughed a lot, this wonderful woman.
“Not at the moment,” she explained. “The hungry fishermen have been and gone. They come before they go out to sea. My Klaus is one of them, you see? They’ll be back again much later. And passing trade? Ja, the locals will come for their Fischbrötchen in a little while, but there aren’t many tourists at this time of year. So, I have a moment. Just for you.”
She looked at me expectantly, and of course I didn’t know what to say. But Greetje proved intuitively tactful. She didn’t ask me what brought me here. Instead, she focused on the practicalities. Regarding my stacked luggage, she presented another opening gambit.
“I gather you’re not just here for the day…” she stated rather than asked. “Do you know where you would like to stay yet? I mean, have you read any of our lovely brochures?”
I shook my head sheepishly, deciding to trust this woman and offer a small part of my story.
“No,” I conceded. “I just sort of got here. I didn’t really know that I was coming.” Greetje received this somewhat unconventional statement with a gleeful rubbing of her hands.
“A modern-day adventuress,” she said jubilantly, “how exciting. So. What’s your aim? Are you looking for the luxury break?”
I took a deep breath. Here was my opening. “Not really a luxury break, no. I was hoping to find somewhere for a few weeks, a little cottage, or even a flat,” I amended hastily, suddenly overcome with fear that a cottage would be way outside my means.
Greetje regarded me with knowing eyes. “A few weeks, huh?”
I nodded, not augmenting thi
s information at this time.
She waggled her head from side to side and passed her hand across her forehead. Evidently she had some kind of proposition up her sleeve and was debating whether to verbalize it or not. Not, for the moment at least. “A cottage?” she asked by way of confirmation. “As in, a cottage-cottage or one with all the mod-cons?”
I gave an involuntary snort at her surprise use of the term “mod-cons.”
“Your English is really so much better than my pitiful German,” I couldn’t resist praising her. “And yes, a cottage-cottage would do. I don’t need all the mod-cons. Although,” I paused reflectively. “Running water would be good, I guess. And electricity.”
This caused an explosion of laughter.
“You’re in the wrong century, my girl.” Greetje flowed over with mirth. “Running water and electricity.” She had to pause as she was overcome again with the giggles. “Of course you shall have running water and electricity. I’ll even throw in central heating and a fitted kitchen. By mod-cons I meant things like whirlpool-baths with heated towel-rails, built-in wardrobes and Wi-Fi and that kind of stuff.”
She calmed down and had a bite to eat. Lifting the lid off the teapot, she had a good long, look, and announced, “Tea’s ready.”
“Wonderful,” I sighed. “May I?” I greedily reached for the pot, but a loud shriek of dismay made my hand freeze mid-move.
“Halt, halt, halt.” Greetje shook her head sternly, but still smiling. “This isn’t how we do it over here. We have our own little ceremony.”
She picked up a little pair of tongs that I hadn’t noticed before and dropped three amber lumps into both cups. “Kluntje,” she explained as she went. “Rock sugar, I believe you’d call it.” I shook my head, indicating I didn’t know.
“Kluntje first, then tea,” Greetje kept up her commentary. She placed a little sieve on top of my cup and poured the tea through it, collecting tea leaves in the sieve. Finally, she repeated the same for her own cup.
“Now, cream,” she concluded and dumped a healthy dollop of cream in our cups.
Cream, mind, not milk. I looked around for a spoon and enterprisingly took one off the table as there were none with our cups.
Greetje chortled under her breath. “We don’t stir. No teaspoon needed,” she remarked, and took a gulp of her own tea.
“But the sugar is all the way at the bottom,” I protested.
“And it is meant to be so,” Greetje interjected hastily as my teaspoon remained threateningly poised above my cup. “This is an experience. Your first taste, it has to be plain and bitter. You have the cream at the next taste. And finally, the sweetness of the sugar waits for you at the very end, rounding the drink off with a sensational…sensation.”
Well, when in Langeoog, do as the natives do. I took a sip but stopped mid-swallow. Ugh, that was bitter. Greetje erupted in laughter again.
“Your face—” she giggled, “—it’s priceless. Go on, have another sip. You’ll hit the cream next.”
I did as instructed and sure enough, things improved dramatically as the cream made an entrance. I gulped greedily, feeling unbelievable thirsty. And wouldn’t you know it, right at the end there came a big hit of sugar.
“Welcome to the proper tea ritual,” Greetje smiled. “Bitter, creamy, and sweet. That’s life, and that’s how the tea should be. Another cup?”
I nodded eagerly. Strange it might be, but I could get used to it. Greetje poured us both a second cup, then returned to the business of homing me.
“So, a cottage for Sophie,” she mused. “Hm.”
I said nothing. I had a distinct feeling she had something in mind.
“There is a cottage…” she started, throwing me an inquiring look.
I gave a slight nod; go on.
“It’s a little bit outside of the village, but it’s beautiful. It’s part of a row of cottages right by the dunes. It’s got everything you need, even telephone and Internet. It’s only—”
I was hanging by the edge of my seat. What was the catch? I was totally hooked, I had visions of thatched roofs and little white roses—wrong season for those obviously, but hey, I knew I wanted this cottage. What was the problem with it?
“What is it?” I finally burst out. “Just tell me.”
“Ach, it’s a bit remote; you know, cut off.”
Remote and cut off didn’t matter to me, on the contrary. I let that pass and tackled ownership instead. “So…do you own the cottage?”
“Yes, yes, we do. My husband and I. It was my mother’s and she left it to us. We rent it out to holiday makers.”
“How much is it?” I asked, ever blunt. Might as well get the evil business over and done with; I didn’t want to get excited and find I couldn’t afford it. Greetje quoted me a figure that was so ludicrous I nearly spat out my tea.
“Six hundred Euro? Is that all?” I did a rapid calculation in my head. That was only just over five hundred pounds. You couldn’t get a shed for that money in London, let alone a cottage. “You’ve got to be kidding,” I threw at her once I recovered.
She smiled, and shook her head. “It’s off season and nobody else wants it. You’ll be paying me normal rent, not holiday rent. So no, I’m not kidding,” she confirmed and added, cryptically, “but it is cold.”
She was letting it dead cheap because it was cold? Somewhat hesitantly, I had to find out, “How cold is cold? I mean, will I permanently freeze, or just have to keep the heating on all the time?”
Now it was Greetje’s turn to look perplexed. “It’s not cold, as such. It’s very cozy. But we’re letting it cold.”
I was still mystified. “You’re letting it cold—so I’m not allowed to put the heating on?”
Greetje finally understood. “Silly me,” she started to clarify. “I am mistranslating what I mean. In German, when you ‘let a house cold,’ it means that bills for heating and hot water are extra. If you let a house ‘warm,’ it means everything is included.”
A light bulb went on over both our heads as we grasped our mutual misunderstanding. “Of course you may turn the heating on,” Greetje wheezed with laughter, now fully comprehending my dilemma. “That’s totally up to you.”
Whilst chatting away like long lost friends, we had finished our absolutely delicious meal and put away three cups of tea each. Time had marched on, and lo and behold, the local lunch crowd started arriving bit by bit. Greetje suggested that I should put my suitcases in back for an hour, have another walk around the village, perhaps buy some groceries, and afterwards she would take me to my new home to see if I would indeed like it. So much kindness and accommodation nearly overwhelmed me, and I couldn’t help giving her a little impromptu hug by way of thanks. She didn’t expect it, but accepted it in the spirit intended and gave me a big smile.
“You’ll be fine here, you wait and see,” she uttered, as though she could see right into my heart and my head.
An hour later, I returned to the tea shop with a bagful of essential groceries. Milk, bread, butter, jam, cheese, salami, pasta, tinned tomatoes, a couple of pizzas, a few things to tide me over for a day or two. When I walked through the door, Greetje swiftly flipped the “open” sign to say “closed” and stuck a note underneath. “Back in ten minutes,” she translated for me, taking me through to the kitchen and out the back door into a yard. There, parked in a little corner and plugged into a power supply, was a dinky little electric van, vaguely resembling a traditional milk float.
“I didn’t think there were cars here on the island?” I questioned her curiously.
“There aren’t, as such, but some of us have little electric runarounds. You know, to get supplies to and from the ferry, and all that. Here, I’ve already put your luggage in, look.” She pointed to the back of the van and sure enough, there were my pink and turquoise suitcases. “I’ll run you to the house, save you walking all that distance with those suitcases. And me.” she grinned. “It is a little bit out of the way.”
Som
ewhat unexpectedly but entirely welcome, I got a ride in an electric van. Down the road we puttered, left, then right and left again, following the curve of the dunes, passing what looked like a school and a mini hospital or something; then left, right, left and right again; I was thoroughly lost.
“Don’t worry,” Greetje instructed. “There is a map with directions—in English, too—in the cottage, and you’ll easily find your way back. Did I mention there are a couple of bikes, also? So you don’t have to walk all the time.”
She shot me an inquiring look. “You do know how to ride a bike, right?”
“’Course I do,” I assured her, inwardly smiling. This was getting better and better.
Chapter Forty-Seven
Just when I thought the dune road wasn’t going anywhere, a little row of cottages came into view. They were nestled in amongst a few low trees and on the inland side of the road relative to the dunes, but they looked adorable. They had a steep hipped roof with red clay tiles and the pretty adornments typical of the island, judging by what I had seen so far. There seemed to be three cottages and, as Greetje slowed down, it appeared one of them was to be mine.
Greetje deftly pulled the van into a narrow driveway in front of the last cottage, the one furthest from the village. It had a white front door, and white mullioned windows including a couple of dormers, and it looked simply adorable. The house of my dreams bar the white roses.
“This is it,” Greetje announced, sensing my excitement. “Na Huus.”
“Na Huus,” I repeated, noticing at the same time that these words were written above the front door. “What does it mean?” I asked.
“Homeward bound,” was Greetje’s answer, and it gave me goosebumps. I had the uncanny feeling as though the earth moved beneath me, just for a second, and I held on to the van for support.
