Christmas on the Little Cornish Isles

by Phillipa Ashley

  ‘And he’s leaving in the spring?’ Jess said in a low voice.

  ‘Yes. Six-month contract then he goes back home.’

  ‘Pity,’ Jess whispered, and sipped her tea delicately.

  Maisie allowed her gaze to rest on Patrick, now standing up, facing away from her, while Ray inspected his work. Patrick tilted his head from side to side and then lifted his arms over his head and stretched his back. The muscles shifted under his cotton T-shirt. Maisie shifted in her seat. This was agony, and he’d only been here three days. She hadn’t slept much last night, partly worrying about the business but also thinking about Patrick, sleeping a few yards away in his single bed, in his navy boxers, or possibly in no boxers at all …

  ‘Actually, it will be a relief when he goes,’ she murmured.

  Jess met Maisie’s gaze head on. ‘You’re not saying that you’ve already … he’s only been here five minutes, though I can’t say I blame you and it’s none of my business.’

  Patrick looked up. He spotted them and saluted. She had a feeling he knew they were watching him and talking about him.

  ‘Shh!’ Maisie groaned. She hadn’t told a soul about her passionate beach kiss with Patrick.

  ‘Well, I wouldn’t blame you,’ Jess repeated, slightly less loudly than a foghorn. ‘Where’s he staying?’

  Maisie paused because she knew what would happen as soon as she shared the information about their household arrangements with Jess. ‘In one of the staff studios.’

  ‘On site?’

  ‘Yup. Just like most of the seasonal staff, as you well know.’ She despaired at Jess’s raised eyebrows and look of sheer disbelief. ‘There is nothing going on between us. Nothing beyond employer and employee, Jess. Read my lips. Patrick McKinnon is my – our – barman and I have no intention of getting involved with him in any way. I’m done forever with men like him who fancy themselves as charmers, and besides, I don’t want to do anything that might cause an experienced barman and general dogsbody to leave.’

  Jess sniggered and sipped her tea significantly.

  ‘Don’t you think I can share a house with a colleague without it turning into Fifty Shades of Grey?’

  ‘So as you’re not interested in Patrick at all, you’d have no problem with me getting to know him better?’

  ‘Why would I?’

  Jess snorted and tea sprayed out of her mouth. ‘I’m s-so sorry b-but …’

  Maisie was seriously pissed off now. Tea dripped down her jeans. ‘You are disgusting, Jess Godrevy. In all kinds of ways; for snorting tea over me and imagining all kinds of filth between me and my new employee. I wish I’d never rescued you from those bullies at school. I wish you weren’t my friend.’

  Jess wiped her face with a tissue and gave a series of little coughs interspersed with giggles.

  ‘Have you finished or will you continue to be a serious health hazard to this hostelry?’ said Maisie.

  Jess rearranged her face into something resembling a human and not a hysterical clown. ‘Oh, hun. I didn’t mean to upset you. God knows you deserve to be happy after Keegan and everything. And I’ll admit I’m envious.’

  ‘Of what?’

  Jess touched Maisie’s arm. ‘Of the sexier, older brother of Chris Hemsworth living and working alongside you. Of the way you can’t take your eyes off him and the way you keep trying to pretend you’re not looking at him. Oh, hello …’

  Abandoning further pretence, they both watched the men stand back from the wall to admire their handiwork. Ray lifted his hand and made a tea-drinking sign. Patrick wiped his forehead and grinned. He knew better than to ask for a cuppa. Patrick knew better than to ask her for anything Maisie wasn’t prepared to give. She was in the driving seat and anything that happened was her decision. For all his flirty charm on their first meetings, and the fact he’d asked for the job, things between them had been strictly professional since.

  ‘Coming up,’ Maisie mouthed and gave her dad the thumbs up.

  ‘Typical men. They do a bit of work and they want a reward,’ said Maisie, although she didn’t really mean it. She was pleased to see her father enjoying his garden again and he definitely needed the help.

  ‘Like a dog hoping for a chew?’ said Jess.

  Maisie laughed and hoped the colour in her cheeks hadn’t betrayed her. ‘Just like that.’

  After a brief chat with Patrick and Maisie’s parents over their tea, Maisie introduced Jess to Patrick ahead of the party that evening. Maisie waved Jess off when she left to pop in on Katya at the campsite, and Maisie and her mum decorated the pub ready for the Hallowe’en party. Patrick and her father were still in the garden, although Ray spent more time leaning on the wall watching Patrick than helping.

  Having adorned the bar with spray-on cobwebs, cardboard pumpkins and bats, Maisie sang along to ‘Monster Mash’ on Radio Scilly while she made sandwiches and baked some frozen sausage rolls to serve later in the buffet. She found it hard to keep her mind on the job because Jess’s mention of Keegan had disturbed her.

  ‘You deserve to be happy after Keegan and everything,’ Jess had told her.

  Keegan and everything.

  Maisie turned the words over in her head. When she’d emerged from the initial stage of grief, she’d consigned Keegan to the bin marked ‘life’s too short for toxic men’, but the ‘everything’ to which Jess had referred couldn’t be dismissed so easily, if ever. The ‘everything’ was the loss of her unborn baby. She’d thought of him as her little scrap of life and even called him that. Her Little Scrap who’d gone far too soon … but it was after the twelve-week scan, and it was a terrible shock.

  Bread knife in her hand, Maisie paused and took a deep breath. It was ‘just one of those awful things’, the doctor had said. There was no reason that they could find. ‘Don’t blame yourself, my love,’ the kind midwife had told her when it was all over.

  But the questions and doubts ate away at her and never left. Had she been working too hard? Had she eaten something she shouldn’t have? Let herself become too stressed about her job? Stepped on a crack in the pavement? No matter what the medics told her, she did blame herself, and a few days after she’d come home and was recovering, Keegan had told her he was leaving. Not because she’d lost his baby, but apparently because he didn’t want her to have it in the first place. He’d tried for her sake to pretend he was happy at the prospect of becoming a father but the ‘whole trauma’ of the past few days and the fact that he no longer owed any real obligations had given him the chance to ‘reassess his priorities’.

  Just like he did with work when he decided to close down a failing pub, thought Maisie.

  She concentrated on slicing a fresh loaf from the Gull Bakery, trying to focus on getting the slices perfectly even, but she couldn’t banish her gloomier thoughts from her mind. Hearing voices outside the kitchen window, she glanced up to see Patrick wheeling a barrow full of rubble down the path towards the house. Chips of stone slid off the pile, pinging on the path. Ray was close behind, issuing orders on where to take the rubble and telling Patrick to be careful not to tip the heavy barrow up.

  Maisie smiled. Her dad had a little more colour than earlier and obviously loved having someone to boss around and let do the heavy work.

  ‘And I’m not that old …’ Maisie said to herself, laughing at her pessimism. Lots of people suffered miscarriages and went on to have healthy babies. One of the customers had three beautiful daughters, all grown up now, after four miscarriages.

  It could happen to her … even though the chances were growing slimmer by the day.

  Maisie stared out of the window. Having deposited the rubble, Patrick was pulling off his builder’s gloves and had caught her eye. He smiled and raised his hand in a tea-drinking gesture.

  ‘You cheeky—’ Her voice was drowned out by the screeching of the smoke alarm. The smell of burning filled her nose. Oh my God, the sausage rolls!

  Chapter 12

  Patrick was used to noisy bars
packed with people, but not a tiny pub that was the hub of the community where he was the star attraction. Within half an hour of the Hallowe’en party kicking off, he already felt like a newborn panda at a city zoo.

  Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller’ was belting out over the speakers so that people had to shout above the noise. Patrick would have turned the sound system down but the music was in Ray’s hands and he didn’t want to interfere.

  There was standing room only in the bar. A corner had been cordoned off to create a makeshift stage with a speaker and a microphone, and was festooned with fake cobwebs with rubber bats hanging from the beams. He knew that this was his debut at the Driftwood, and that he was probably as much a part of the entertainment for the evening as any of the ‘acts’. He’d braced himself for the fact that being a newcomer in this tiny community would make him an object of interest, but he hadn’t quite been prepared for so much attention all in one go.

  Ray was dressed as Dracula with Hazel as his bride. Maisie flitted about the bar in a slinky red ‘devil’ outfit and black pointy boots, which Patrick was finding a major distraction. She had a red plastic pitchfork behind the bar that she used to prod people at regular intervals.

  In desperation, Patrick had decided on a makeshift Zombie outfit, ripping up an old T-shirt and, with the help of some of Hazel’s make-up and a YouTube video, had managed a passable impression of a rotting corpse. He wasn’t a natural costume-party person but had long become used to joining in themed events at the Fingle. Besides, the outfit gave him a literal and metaphorical mask to hide behind during his baptism of fire behind the bar at the Driftwood.

  ‘Nice costume,’ said Maisie briskly, when he’d arrived for work.

  ‘You too,’ he replied, trying not to make the comment sound pervy in any way, even though she looked edible in the slinky scarlet Lycra. ‘Nice … um … horns.’

  ‘Thanks, and may I say, being one of the living dead really suits you,’ she’d fired back in return.

  They’d barely had a chance to speak since people had started arriving as soon as the doors opened at seven o’clock. Patrick had been surprised at the amount of people willing to venture out across the seas on an October night. However, he’d soon learned that most of the islanders were skilled boatmen and women, used to navigating their way around the seas of Scilly even in the dark and less than ideal conditions. Really bad conditions did keep some of the smaller vessels in port at times, that was inevitable, but fortunately it was a calm evening and no one was going to miss the Hallowe’en party night – not to mention the added attraction of an exotic new face, even if that face did look like he’d risen fresh from the grave.

  Vampires, werewolves, Frankenstein’s monsters, witches, ghosts and ghouls piled into the bar. The costumes were largely homemade, some more convincing than others. In minutes, the questions and banter flew at him and he tried to give as good as he got, all the while serving drinks under Maisie’s watchful eye. You’re on trial, Patrick, mate, he told himself as she shot a sideways glance at him when she was collecting glasses. You always will be with this woman.

  He turned his attention to the locals at the bar.

  ‘So are there crocodiles in Melbourne?’

  ‘Nah, mate. That’s up in the top end.’

  ‘Snakes and spiders?’

  ‘Both, and most of ’em will kill you.’

  ‘Bet you’re not used to this kind of weather, mate.’

  ‘It’s balmy here. Melbourne gets four seasons in one day and Sydney has more rain than London.’

  ‘Nice costume. I’d have thought you’d come as a kangaroo.’

  ‘What are you doing on Gull Island?’ He’d heard that one a dozen times.

  ‘I got fed up of the crocodiles,’ he replied.

  He did his best to remember all the names and, despite the costumes, even recognised a few who he’d encountered already on the island.

  There was Maisie’s friend Jess who was friendly enough but couldn’t seem to decide if she wanted to flirt with him or not. She was made up as Morticia Addams but still looked very pretty. A bloke dressed as Frankenstein’s monster seemed to have his eagle eye on her. Patrick had learned that he was ‘Adam’ and was a postman. The monster disguise suited him: he was as big and fit as a Marlee bull and kept staring at Jess and shooting less than friendly looks at Patrick for some reason.

  As well as Jess and her bolt-necked admirer, Patrick recognised the middle-aged couple that ran the Fudge Pantry and the white-haired, leathery-skinned Archie Pendower who had an artist’s studio on St Piran’s. His lady friend was with him, a sharp-eyed pensioner in a long shabby velvet coat. Everyone called her ‘Fen’ and she reminded Patrick of something out of Harry Potter. Archie hadn’t bothered with a costume and Patrick wasn’t sure if Fen had or not.

  Javid the campsite owner, aka Grim Reaper, wandered in before the Open Mic sessions, accompanied by Katya, who was back from a temporary teaching post abroad and planned on staying on Gull over the winter.

  The entertainment started. There were singers of both sexes and all abilities, plus a very well-fed skeleton doing impressions of politicians and celebrities – not that badly either. Archie sang a sea shanty in a quavery baritone that made the hairs on the back of Patrick’s neck stand on end.

  In the interval, Jess’s brother, Will, arrived with their mother. Even given Will’s werewolf costume and make-up, the family resemblance was obvious and they handed a large bunch of yellow narcissi to Hazel Samson who greeted them with a warm embrace before taking the flowers up to the flat.

  Halfway through the night, a striking forty-something woman in a dog collar, cowboy boots and flashing devil’s horns walked in to the bar, carrying a pug. A man got up, said, ‘How lovely to see you, vicar,’ and greeted her like an old friend. The pug yapped when anyone approached, so the vicar, who Patrick discovered was known as Rev Bev and recently posted to Scilly, soothed it with dog treats and kisses.

  As he served an endless stream of people, Patrick added the names of unfamiliar customers to his mental list, trying to remember faces, names and jobs. There were boatmen, airport workers, ferry operators, shopkeepers, nature wardens, hoteliers, waiters, farmers, fishermen and smallholders from Gull and the other isles. Some of them had two or three jobs, which added to his confusion. Those who hadn’t introduced themselves might be holidaymakers, although he doubted it. Anyone who was in the pub either lived on Gull or had their own boat, or a mate with a boat, because there were no ferries in the dark evenings.

  Maisie and Jess produced sandwiches, a new batch of unburned sausage rolls and pickles and the customers fell on them like gulls round a herring boat. Glasses were refilled and the second half began. Somebody produced a banjo and Adam the postman, Will Godrevy and a few of their mates belted out some local folk tunes. By the end of their set, everyone joined in.

  A chorus of voices, few of them in tune but all of them enthusiastic, shook the Driftwood Inn to the rafters. Patrick’s arms ached from building walls and pulling pints and his jaw ached from smiling. Over the past few weeks while he’d been travelling from Australia via the Far East to London and down to Scilly, he’d forgotten how hard bar work was, and how much he loved it. Doing a real job, losing himself in the crowd, serving other people helped him to avoid having time to think and dwell on other things.

  Jess’s admirer, Adam, was watching him like a hawk as he served another glass of wine to her. She’d relaxed a little now and stayed next to the bar, asking Patrick about his life in Australia while he worked. Turned out she’d done some grape picking in Victoria after she’d left university and seemed happy to have someone to share her reminiscences with. Patrick had no problem spending time with her but was all too aware of Adam and the other locals keeping an eye on him. He was also aware she was Maisie’s friend, and that he was very new in town and on trial in more ways than one. There was being sociable to your boss’s attractive best friend and then there was flirting and Patrick wanted to stay
the right side of the line.

  ‘Will you be doing a turn later?’ Jess asked as a Zombie juggler received a warm round of applause. Will began to set up the backing track for ‘Someone Like You’ by Adele ready for a woman who worked in the tourist info centre.

  ‘Only if I’m forced,’ said Patrick. ‘We don’t want any broken windows.’

  ‘Oh come on, you can’t be that bad.’

  ‘Wait and see … what can I get you, officer?’

  Patrick took a J2O from the chiller for the island policeman who was still in semi-uniform, though not on official business apparently. While he opened the bottle he caught Jess glancing at Adam with a wistful look on her face. Adam returned the glance briefly and then pointedly turned his back. Jesus, what was wrong with the guy?

  Jess bit her lip. ‘I’m going into the back to help Hazel and Maisie with the buffet,’ she said. Her eyes looked suspiciously bright to Patrick but he wasn’t going to go there. He had enough trouble keeping his own love life – or lack of it – from becoming complicated and he was sure to hear the gossip about Adam and Jess sooner or later, whether he wanted to or not. In fact, he’d learned long ago that see no evil, hear no evil and definitely speak no evil was often the best policy for a barman, as long as no laws were being broken, or only minor ones, and as long as no one was being physically harmed.

  A man, about Patrick’s own age, strolled up to the bar. He wore a waxed jacket, cords and brogues like he’d stepped out of a country estate and his blond hair was damp with rain and sea spray. A black Labrador trotted in after him and stood next to him, gazing up at Patrick through soulful eyes. Faces turned towards man and dog and a few people nodded but most immediately turned back to their own conversations.