The Beach Hut Next Door (2 page)
Vince planted his feet wide on the deck to maintain his balance while he shovelled the last of the bacon roll into his mouth and checked his mobile phone for the last time before they went out. It was going to be rough out there today and he felt the same twinge of unease he always did, because although the forecast said it wouldn’t go above gale force 6, you couldn’t be sure. You could never be sure. He cast a look at the skyline. The clouds above the harbour were slate grey but not as threatening as they might be – a certain lightening around the edges hinted they might go away by mid-morning given an incentive.
The water was sludgy and choppy, slapping against the harbour wall and the sides of the fishing vessel. The other boats clustered around were mostly day boats; there was nothing flashy or grand in Tawcombe. The seas around the little town were too challenging for most fair-weather sailors, and there were no smart restaurants or bars to lure the gin-palace brigade. Vince liked it that way. He didn’t want tourists pushing up the mooring fees or pricing out the locals, turning Tawcombe into a chichi playground, abandoned at the first hint of autumn then turned into a ghost town for the next six months.
The two lads he’d taken on at the beginning of the summer were setting the pots ready. They were good lads. Fearless, hardworking and as loyal as you could hope for; ex-Marines who’d given up military life for something that was, at times, just as tough and physical and decidedly less glamorous. Yellow oilskins and blue plastic gloves didn’t have the pulling appeal of a uniform, somehow.
There was no sign of Chris. Of course not. Given that he’d ended up in a lock-in at the George and Dragon last night. The barmaid there had texted Vince at about eleven. He had a network of people around the town who gave him the heads-up on Chris’s whereabouts and condition. Not that he could do anything about it, but he still felt responsible. He always felt responsible. For what had happened. For what might still happen. It was a curse. He would have given anything to wake up and not feel the burden on his shoulders, weighing him down like an albatross.
He swallowed the last morsel of bacon and stuck his phone back in his pocket with a sigh. There’d been no more reports, so presumably Chris was sleeping it off somewhere. It was lucky Vince didn’t have anything else planned for today, but then he was used to dropping everything at the last minute to step in as skipper.
He wasn’t supposed to be hands-on any more. He and Chris had agreed, when they’d taken on the two Marines, that Vince would concentrate on expansion so they could afford the extra wages. It was his role to find bars and pubs and restaurants to supply, and to organize delivery, and run the business generally: advertising and administration and endless paperwork, organizing the maintenance of the boat, liaising with the foreign agents whose lorries swept into the harbour three nights a week to pick up any excess catch; overseeing the shop – well, if you could call it a shop; it was a glorified market stall – that opened at weekends and throughout the summer. It was all Vince could do to keep up with it, now they had expanded, but he always had to be ready to step in and, quite literally, take over at the helm.
If Chris weren’t his brother, he’d be seriously considering a written warning.
The sign on their lock-up still said Maskell and Sons. It stood amidst a row of dilapidated buildings on the quay – a raggle-taggle row of storage units, sheds and warehouses that reeked of fish and salt and diesel. They’d just had a proper roof put on, instead of the wriggly tin that had been there since forever, and put heating in, and divided the inside into an office, a storage area containing the tanks which held over a metric tonne of lobster at any one time, and the open-fronted booth where they sold their catch. They’d wanted to be sensible with the insurance money. It would be all too easy to fritter it.
Nevertheless, Vince couldn’t bring himself to get the signwriter to change the sign to Maskell Bros, even though that was what was on their headed notepaper now.
The boat had nearly reached open water, passing the last of the unforgiving cliffs that made up this part of the coast. The ozone-rich breeze ruffled Vince’s shoulder-length hair, bleached almost white by the sun and the salt. Only his semi-permanent stubble gave away his true hair colour, an indeterminate brown. He shaved it off once a week, on a Saturday night, because after six days he couldn’t bear the itching. His face was tanned to a light brown by the elements, and in the midst of it ice-blue eyes analysed everything with a thoughtful, perspicacious gaze.
Someone once said Vince’s eyes spoke more than he did.
He felt his phone buzz in his pocket. He thought about ignoring it. Now they were on their way, there was nothing much he could do if it was Chris either grovelling or demanding a lift from wherever it was he’d ended up.
Curiosity got the better of him and he pulled out his phone.
It wasn’t Chris. It was his mate, Murphy. He often phoned at this time, when he stopped off for his morning latte and almond croissant in Chiswick High Street. Their worlds, which had once been the same, were now a universe apart.
‘Vince. It’s Murph, man. Meet me in Everdene tonight.’
‘On a Monday? At this time of year?’ Vince was puzzled.
‘I’ve had a tip-off. I’ve got a proposition for you.’
‘Why does that make my heart sink?’
‘Come on – where’s your entrepreneurial spirit?’
‘I’m a fisherman, Murph. Not Alan Sugar.’
‘Don’t give me that. You haven’t kept that business going without having your head screwed on. Most people would have gone under by now. Come on – six o’clock in the Ship Aground. You know you want to.’
Vince smiled to himself.
Murphy could talk anyone into anything. It was part of his charm. He was so utterly plausible and convincing. A born salesman. Even Vince, who was by nature cautious, even cynical, could already feel himself beguiled by Murphy’s enthusiasm, just as he had been at school.
They were Tawcombe boys, the two of them. They spent their youth bunking off school, kicking around the harbour or grabbing the bus to Everdene or Mariscombe, the nearest beaches, where they’d spend the day surfing then finish off by building a campfire. They’d been carefree times, thought Vince. Neither of them had had a thought for the future and what it might bring.
Of course, Vince’s future had already been mapped out for him. He’d known from birth that he would join his father in the fishing business. It was unspoken. There was simply no point in him thinking about going to college or having any other kind of career. He was born to it. It was as simple as that.
His acceptance of his fate had driven Murphy insane: he saw it as lack of ambition. Murphy couldn’t wait to get out and see the big wide world. His mum and dad weren’t indigenous to Tawcombe like Vince’s. They’d moved down from Birmingham after the IRA pub bombings, when there was a wave of anti-Irish sentiment in the city and it all got too much for them. They’d bought the run-down café by the bus station, where Vince had bought his bacon roll that morning, thinking it would be a better life for them and their five children, and it was. Murphy had been a fat, laughing baby in a pram who became a fixture in the café, spoiled and cossetted by every customer who walked through the door.
His name was Sean, but everyone called him by his last name, because it suited him better. And he and Vince had been firm friends since the day they first met at primary school, where Murphy made a profit selling blackjacks he’d stolen from one of the jars behind the counter at the café, and Vince tried to buy the lot off him in return for a ride on his BMX.
Vince had admired Murphy’s entrepreneurial spirit even then. And Murphy had admired Vince’s quiet practicality; his skill with tools and engines and knives and knots; his knowledge of wildlife and the sea. And, as they grew older, his magnetic pull where women were concerned. Murphy was no slouch in the looks department, with his close-cropped black curls and his green eyes and his Celtic freckles, but there was something about Vince that women found irresistible. Maybe it was Vince’s total self-containment and his apparent lack of interest? Murphy could never feign that as long as he lived. He was borderline obsessed with women and could never disguise it. He just couldn’t help himself. He still couldn’t. Even now, when the two of them went out to the Ship Aground in Everdene, Murphy would be chatting up girls until closing time, even though he was happily married with two daughters of his own. Vince wondered how many times he had picked up the pieces over the years. Or calmed some sobbing female who had been the victim of one of Murphy’s flirtatious overtures. Not that they ever came to anything. If he’d been a girl, Murphy would have been called a prick-tease.
‘You can’t play with people for your own amusement,’ Vince told him repeatedly. ‘Or to feed that bloody ego of yours. And it’s not fair on Anna.’
Anna. Vince’s heart always missed a beat whenever he thought of her. Vince didn’t think he had ever met anyone as serene and beautiful and calm. With her silver-blonde hair and her milk-white skin, she was as pale as moonlight, her eyes large and lambent in her face.
Anna was a piano teacher. She gave lessons on the baby grand in the bay window of their living room in Chiswick. She was booked solidly, with an endless waiting list. Mothers and fathers fought between themselves to bring their darling ones to her lessons, and were so entranced by Anna they often found long-dead ambition rekindling and a sudden burning desire to play Chopin or Debussy.
Vince loved the Murphy house. It was filled with music and candlelight and laughter. Everything was pale and beautiful, like Anna. Bleached wood, voile curtains, lace tablecloths. He imagined heaven a bit like this. Murphy himself was the only thing that didn’t seem to fit there. Even their daughters were mini versions of Anna, drifting like moonbeams around the house, pensive and other-worldly. Amongst the three of them, Murphy crackled with pent-up energy, restless and wired. But then, Vince told himself, opposites attract. He himself, with his calm introspection, was probably too like Anna to capture her interest. She just laughed at Murphy, who she called Smurph and never took too seriously.
Their symbiosis intrigued him, and he wondered if there was a girl somewhere for him who would balance him out in the way Anna balanced out Murphy. He was never short of offers, but no one intrigued him the way she did. Although he suspected that together they would sink into nothingness. There would be no traction, no momentum. They would drift.
Whenever he went to visit them, he didn’t want to leave.
‘You should come and live up here for a while,’ Murphy had told him a few years ago. ‘Everyone should live in London at some point in their life.’
‘And do what?’ asked Vince. ‘Not much call for a lobster fisherman in Chiswick.’
That was back in the day, when he could have left if he’d really wanted to. Now, he reflected, as the boat chugged out into open water and he steered it towards Lundy, towards the deep, cold water where their bounty lurked, he had no chance. His life had certainty and rhythm, but no hope of escape.
Though maybe whatever it was Murphy was going to propose would provide a distraction at the very least. After all, his last great idea had been a stroke of genius. Murphy, who had his finger on some mysterious pulse that gave him the heads-up on everything from VIP Glastonbury tickets to shares that defied all trading records, had been offered two beach huts, side by side, on Everdene Sands, for a steal. And being a friend, he’d offered Vince one, instead of selling it on at a substantial profit. Vince was eternally grateful that he had given him the opportunity, not because the huts were now worth double, but because his hut had provided him with the sanctuary he needed. It was an escape, a refuge, a home from home; somewhere he could forget the past and his responsibilities.
So he wasn’t going to ignore whatever Murphy had up his sleeve.
‘Six o’clock it is,’ he said, and hung up.Vince didn’t waste words. Besides, once the boat had rounded the promontory, they would lose signal. He would be incommunicado for the rest of the day.
At six that night, showered and dressed in faded jeans and a soft grey sweatshirt, an olive-green beanie pulled down over his damp hair, Vince strolled into the Ship Aground. Murphy was perched on a high stool at the bar. His uniform was much the same, only his sweatshirt was Abercrombie & Fitch and his beanie was cashmere. Had it been the height of summer, the two of them would have attracted infinite female interest, but the bar sported only a smattering of drinkers. The pub stayed resolutely open throughout the winter for the sake of the locals, who would otherwise have nowhere to meet or drink. The owner didn’t mind that he rarely met his overheads over the hibernal months. He more than made up for it in summer.
The two friends clasped hands as Vince took the stool next to Murphy.
‘How’s it going?’
‘It’s good,’ said Murphy. ‘But it’s going to get better. You know Marianne’s?’
‘The restaurant?’
‘She’s had enough. She’s shutting down. She’s given me first refusal on the lease.’
Marianne’s was a rather tired French restaurant that had been in Everdene for as long as anyone could remember. Its eponymous owner was a legend, but an ageing one. Come every winter she threatened to close and move back to France. Only this time, it seemed she meant it.
‘Have you taken it?’
‘Too right. Leases like that don’t come up round here very often. And I’ve got a plan.’
‘Course you have.’ Vince smiled. When did his friend not have a plan? It was one of the things he loved best about him.
Murphy slid the elastic band off a rolled-up set of drawings.
‘This, my friend, is the venture we have been waiting for.’
He spread out the paper, which was smothered in sketches and scribbles and mathematical equations – the inner workings of Murphy’s mind; a tangle of hieroglyphics and images that Vince had learned to decipher over the years.
‘We strip the building out completely. Take it right back to the bare walls. Re-plaster; wallop it out. Then, we put in an open-plan kitchen separated from the restaurant by a zinc counter. Out the front we have rubber flooring and long tables with benches and stainless steel shelving. All very industrial chic.’