by Chris Ward
Grace stared at the man’s departing back, then turned to Joan. ‘Was that Hedges?’ she asked, unable to keep the incredulity out of her voice. ‘I mean, the sideburns are a giveaway, but—’
‘He won six figures on the lottery,’ Joan said, giving a little shake of her head. ‘And of all the things to buy, you’d never have guessed he’d buy a pasty company.’
‘I’ve never heard of Suncrust Pasties,’ Grace said.
‘It used to be Dirgil’s, that god awful packet supermarket brand that we used to rip on. Remember that chant whenever some kid had one in their lunchbox?’
Grace smiled. ‘Dirgil’s, Dirgil’s, fit for gerbils.’
‘That was it. I think there were verses but I can’t remember them now. They went bankrupt. Hedges bought up what was left and turned it into Suncrust.’
The door opened. Hedges, sideburns pressing out from beneath his Suncrust Pasties cap, smiled. ‘Feel like me ears are burning,’ he said.
Joan nodded at Grace. ‘Do you remember Grace Clelland, Steve?’
Steve Hedge set down the trolley and frowned. ‘Grace … yeah, I remember. You guys were chums, right?’
Grace winced. It was Hedges, without a doubt. The weird kid from a couple of years below them at school, who used to spend his lunchtimes kicking a squashed Coke can around a corner of the playground because no one would let him join their games. As someone a couple of years older and several degrees cooler, Grace had barely registered him on her periphery, noticeable only for the sideburns which he had sported from as soon as he was old enough to grow them. No one had ever seemed to know him personally, and on the couple of times she had thought of him since leaving school, she had found it most likely he would end up in a boring corner desk position in a local council or insurance office.
No longer the spotty outcast, he had grown tall, his shoulders filled out, no doubt from lugging boxes of pasties about on a daily basis. And, dare she even think it, while certainly no standout, there was an angle about him that was almost handsome.
‘It looks like you’ve done well for yourself, Hed—I mean, Steve.’
Hedges shrugged. ‘Suppose so.’ He gave a nervous scratch of his right sideburn, a relic from the nineteen sixties. ‘Done okay.’
There was an awkward moment as they faced each other in a triangle before Hedges tipped his cap and bid them goodbye. Grace watched as the van pulled away.
‘He supplies half the cafés for twenty miles in each direction,’ Joan said. ‘He also has three local bakeries. He’s turned Dirgil’s from a laughing stock into a proper contender. And he married Motormouth.’
‘Becky Rendle?’
‘The one and only. She’s Becky Hedge now, believe it or not.’
‘No….’
‘These are strange days, Graceful. That’s life for you.’
Grace stared out of the window after the departed pasty van. ‘That’s it,’ she said. ‘That’s how we can stop your mum selling the café.’
Joan rolled her eyes. ‘Employ Becky Hedge? Tried it last summer. She scared the customers away.’
‘No, I don’t mean that. Didn’t you see the side of his van? The logo. Suncrust Pasties – the taste of crispy.’
‘Yeah, it’s ridiculous.’
‘I know it is, but at the same time it’s perfect. Do you remember the number one thing we used to complain about? How soggy those Dirgil’s pasties were. Lumps of soft, cold pasty with soft, cold meat inside. He’s taken the very thing that no one liked about them and used the exact opposite as his calling card.’
‘And how is that supposed to save the café?’
Grace clapped her hands together. ‘You need something similar. A logo. A catchphrase. Something universal but unique at the same time.’
‘Like what?’
Grace opened her mouth to speak, but for once, nothing would come out.
‘I’ll think of something,’ she said.
‘Day off?’ Jason asked as Grace came through the door. ‘Thanks for the barbeque the other night. It was great.’
‘You’ll be a legend with those sea shanties,’ Grace said. ‘Are you free this Saturday night? I agree with what you said. Let’s make these barbeques a regular thing.’ Even as she said it, she realised what a warm feeling the idea gave her. ‘I’ll invite a few extra people each week, until it becomes the go-to party for the summer.’
Jason smiled. ‘You’re ambitious, I’ll give you that. After a rental today?’
‘Actually, I was wondering who made your shop’s logo. You’ve got those cool t-shirts over there by the door. I just wondered who designed it. Was it some online company?’
Jason fiddled with his fingers, his cheeks flushing red. ‘Ah, yeah. That.’
‘Do you have an email address or a website?’
‘Mrs. Oldfield.’
Grace stared. ‘Excuse me? As in, the teacher Mrs. Oldfield? With the golden retrievers?’
‘Ah, yeah. Used to be an art teacher, didn’t she?’
‘So she did.’
‘She’s friends with my mum. They’re part of the same wickerwork club. Meet first Tuesday of the month. Mum told her I’d bought the shop, and the next month Mum comes home with this logo drawn on a piece of paper. And it was bang on the money.’
‘That’s great.’
‘Yeah, we sell loads. Mostly to tourists. They love a good souvenir. Locals won’t be seen dead wearing anything with my name on it.’ His cheeks were still red, but he was looking at her now with an earnestness that made her uncomfortable. ‘Listen, could I ask you something?’
No. He wasn’t about to ask her out, surely? Grace felt a tremble of fear. He was a lovely guy, but not her type at all. He was too short for a start, not that she wanted to discriminate. No doubt he looked good in a wetsuit, but he just had a goofiness to him that she couldn’t unsee.
‘Sorry, I’ve got to get back to the café. I’m on lunch.’
He shrugged. ‘Sure, no worries.’
Grace backed out, information gleaned but also a possible proposition strung out with fairy lights between them. What was she going to do? She had already invited him to the barbeque. Still, it was a few days away. She could plan a suitable response in the meantime, one that wouldn’t let him down too harshly, one that would allow them to remain friends.
Outside, she was about to head back towards the café when a voice made her heart sink.
‘Grace! Over here!’
She looked up. Daniel stood across the street on the promenade, but he wasn’t alone. A tall, beautiful woman who looked like she had been cut out of a swimwear magazine stood beside him. They were holding hands. Nearby, two children were playing by the promenade wall.
‘Uh, hi.’
‘Come and meet Isabella.’
There was nothing in the world Grace wanted less right now, except perhaps for a tractor and muck spreader to come driving past and shower her with cow dung. Even then, it was a close thing.
‘Oh, sure,’ she called, wishing with all her being for a sudden invisible wall to appear in the middle of the road and make their meeting an impossibility.
Isabella was so beautiful she could have stopped traffic. The closer Grace got to the woman who had claimed the vacant heart she had left behind, the more beautiful she became. By the time Grace stood on the promenade before them, Daniel beaming as though introducing his current to his ex was the most normal thing in the world, and Isabella grinning a Vogue smile that made Grace feel she had been shot down and shot down hard, Grace felt like she had morphed into Rumplestiltskin over the course of a few steps.
‘It’s lovely to meet you,’ she said, wondering whether I’ll cut out your heart and lock it in a tower might not be a more appropriate opening salvo.
‘This is Grace Clelland,’ Daniel said, indicating her with a flourish just in case Isabella was unsure to whom he might be referring. ‘A friend from school.’
‘It’s nice to meet you too,’ Isabella said. ‘Daniel
has mentioned you before.’
Grace’s ears burned. She wondered just what Daniel might have said. Surely not that he was her first.
‘All good, I hope?’ Grace said, giving Isabella the chance to reply with, ‘No, he told me you dumped him to go off to university, leaving him brokenhearted with a ring in his hand. Are you satisfied with yourself?’
When all Isabella said was, ‘Yes, of course,’ it was something of an anticlimax.
‘I’m just visiting for the summer,’ Grace said, as Isabella continued to watch her. She tried to get a glimpse of the woman’s hand, to see if she was wearing the ring Daniel had long ago offered to her, but it was clasped too tightly in Daniel’s for her to get a decent look.
‘Visiting family?’
‘Friends. My family moved away a long time ago.’
‘So Daniel said.’
Did he now? ‘I’m working in the Blue Sands Café,’ Grace said, wondering as she said it why Isabella’s eyes compelled her to lay her soul bare. Perhaps that was why Daniel liked her? ‘I needed a break from city life. It was starting to get me down.’
Isabella was still watching her. ‘Is that right?’
‘I had some problems at work, trouble with a boyfriend, a couple of other setbacks….’ Grace clamped her mouth closed before she started to tell Isabella about the in-growing toenail she’d had cut out last year.
‘Well, you’ll find peace here in Blue Sands for sure,’ Isabella said, sounding like a lifelong local. ‘It’s a lovely, relaxing place. If you need a shoulder, or just someone to talk to, come and find me in the Low Anchor. We’ll share a bottle and a chitchat.’
‘Ah, sure. Sounds nice. Um, anyway, I’d better get back. I just popped out for a minute.’
Grace managed to draw her eyes away from Isabella to look at Daniel, standing beside her. He was grinning and nodding as though delighted his ex and his current were set to be such great friends.
‘Lovely to see you again,’ Daniel said. ‘It’s nice to have you back around. A familiar face and everything. So many leave and don’t come back.’
Grace wanted to be sick. She was just about to make her escape when one of the kids wandered over, did a quick spin of Daniel’s right leg and then looked up at Grace, a frown on her little face.
‘Who’s this old lady?’ the little girl said, eyes wide with innocence.
Isabella gave a laugh that could have come from a songbird. Daniel patted the girl on the head. ‘Less of the old, Angelica. This is Grace Clelland.’
‘This was Grace Clelland,’ Grace said clumsily as she backed into the street. ‘Now it’s just a woman late for work.’
The horn of the bus made her do a weird sideways spider-jump, arms lifted at right angles to her sides. The bus that had braked sharply less than an arm’s length away gave a hiss of hydraulics. The driver’s window slid down and an irate face leaned out.
‘Watch where you’re bloody walking, won’t you?’
Grace could only mumble an apology. The driver shut the window and the bus pulled off, rumbling along the promenade road. Daniel and the kids laughed, and Isabella put a hand over her mouth as though to catch a secret.
‘I’d better get back,’ Grace mumbled around a mouthful of utter humiliation, then turned and scurried off before anything could happen to ruin her life further. From behind her she heard Angelica asking her mother an innocent question: ‘Does she know she just stepped on some dog mess?’ but Grace was out of earshot before she could catch the answer.
18
Companion
She knew her figure wasn’t particularly impressive, but all the spinning classes had been good for something. The swimsuit was a size small, but it wasn’t restrictively tight, and she’d checked that she didn’t bulge in any embarrassing places. She’d never be a model like Isabella, but she could go for a swim without feeling like a whale.
With the sun going down, the water was losing what heat it had collected during the day. Grace winced as she waded deeper and the little waves sloshed up her body. Then when one larger swell rose right up to her shoulders, she gave up trying to ease herself into the water and just kicked off, ducking down, letting the sea engulf her.
She came up a few feet away, kicking hard, moving out through the gentle water. Once the initial cold shock had gone and her body had adjusted to the temperature, it felt magic. With the sun low in the sky and the few early season tourists gone home, she was free from any disapproval, and let herself relax as she swam out, feeling her muscles stretch and contract as they pushed and pulled her through the gentle swell.
After ten minutes or so she paused, treading water. She was a fair way out now, with deep water below her. Lit by the evening sun, the Mourning Lady was off to the north, Sharker’s Rock still some way out further to the south. The beach looked miles away, even if in reality she was probably only two minutes’ swim from having sand under her feet, but in water too calm for surfers and too cold for other evening swimmers, she felt utterly alone, and for once, at peace.
Along the top of the promenade, the lights of the pubs had come on. During August the tourists would spill out of the doors onto the promenade, laughing and drinking, but June and most of July still belonged to the few locals who came down in the evening for a quiet drink. Through the lit windows of the Low Anchor she could see a couple sitting at a window table, a woman who could have been Isabella leaning over them, taking a food order.
She was happy for Daniel, really. She would be happier still if Isabella was more of a troll, perhaps missing an eye or with a scar or something. Short, dumpy, a limp. But really, she was happy for him. She had left; he had moved on. It was the way things were, the way things should be. In some ways, despite her problems, it had been a mistake to come back. You could never truly relive the past; there were too many variables, and if the past you were attempting to replicate had been idyllic, you were doomed to failure from the outset. All you could do was attempt to make a new future, one that took the best aspects of the past and added new elements to the mix.
She swam a little further out, almost as far as she dared, until she started to feel the rise of the bigger Atlantic swells no longer deflected by the Blue Point headland. The thrill of swimming into deep water gave her a rush of excitement, but she lingered only a couple of minutes before starting the swim back into the bay, aware that the ocean was not a beast to be tested. As a teenager, she had seen too many helicopters, too many lifeboats sent to pick up tourists who’d been fooled by the water’s glassy surface into going out too far.
Soon she began to feel the occasional brush of sand beneath her feet, so she slowed herself and started to tread water again. The year’s longest day had passed just a week before, and even now at nearly ten o’clock the beach was still illuminated in a calm orange glow. Clouds had come in along the horizon to hide the sun as it set, but it still felt like a spotlight was falling over the cove. Grace kicked, moving around in a gentle circle, taking in the cliffs rising around her, marveling at how small she felt, and how little it bothered her.
She was about to turn back to the beach when something bobbed out of the water nearby.
At first she thought it was some kind of ball, perhaps having floated out from the beach. Then it moved, big eyes blinked, and the grey seal dropped out of sight.
Grace smiled. She spun around, looking for it. It reappeared a few metres away, in the direction of the Mourning Lady. Grace called out to it, but the seal made no reaction. It watched her for a few moments, then dropped back into the water.
For several minutes she trod water while the seal appeared and disappeared around her, perhaps playing, perhaps wondering what on earth she was doing out in the sea so late. Finally, with the cold starting to creep, Grace swam into the shore and climbed out, brushing drops of salt water off her body. The sun had set now, and a gradual darkness was falling over the sea. A little way offshore, she caught sight of the seal again. She wondered momentarily if it might do something fa
ntastical, like lift a flipper and wave—she considered saying so to Joan anyway, just for a laugh—but it just watched her for a short while, then, perhaps understanding that its brief playmate had given up and gone in, it dropped into the water and was gone.
Grace walked up to the foreshore where she had left her towel, now only a shadow in the falling darkness. Beyond the promenade, the sound of music drifted out across the beach, and bodies moved inside the windows of the Low Anchor.
Grey seals weren’t uncommon visitors to Blue Sands. Sometimes in the winter they would drag themselves up onto the beach. It had been some years since Grace had last swum with one, though. She remembered it clearly. It had been the summer she had met Daniel.
‘Are you going to bring me good luck again this time?’ she whispered, as she sat on a rock and wiped herself dry. Even as she said it, though, she wondered whether meeting Daniel had been good luck or not. After all, things hadn’t turned out quite the way she had hoped.
From up on the promenade, she heard the sound of laughter. A group of young locals had brought their drinks out from the pub and were sitting on the wall above the beach. With a smile Grace wrapped her towel around her shoulders and headed up the gravel access track, wondering if there was anyone she knew.
19
Old friends
‘What’s your angle?’ Mrs. Oldfield said, patting Daisy as the huge Golden Retriever slumped over her legs like a giant blonde blanket.
‘My angle?’
‘You’ve got to have an angle, otherwise your design won’t stand out,’ Mrs. Oldfield said.
‘Can’t you just make something artistic, like you did for Jason?’
‘Look, there’s a big difference between art and design, not that those fools who run the school boards would know. Art is expression, a projection of self. Design is representation, suggestion.’
‘Oh.’
‘In other words, advertising. You design something that you want people to take note of, so that they’ll remember you or buy your products. At least that’s what the online course said, and I signed up for that because of their silly dog logo. So, what’s it to be? What’s your angle?’
