The Briny Café (2 page)

She bites into a grape and struggles to remember the
features of her mother's face. She comes up blank. Instead, she finds herself thinking about the way her mother would half-fill a basin of water to wash Ettie's hands in soap that smelled of lavender. It was a ritual that even as a child she recognised as pure love. From her bed, her mother tried to pass on all the advice and wisdom she thought her daughter would need in the days, and years, ahead. But Ettie was a child and had no real understanding of death – how there was no going back from it – so she barely listened, figuring there'd be time when her mother was better. How she wishes she'd written down the words, if only to return to them for comfort every now and then.

It's not that Ettie hates her life nowadays. No, not her life. You have to be pretty damn dumb to hate life. Or crook in ways she doesn't want to think about. It's just that she can't work out why she finds herself with so very little to show for her fifty-five years.

There had been a husband once. Tick that box. One of those blue-eyed charmers with an easy way, who loved women.
All
women. “So why did you marry me?” Ettie had asked after she'd caught him in the pool house with a woman pressed up against the wall with her eyes closed and her skirt hoisted to her waist.

“I love flesh. I really do,” he'd told her matter-of-factly. “If you're married, they don't see commitment as an option.”

“So you can screw your brains out and still come home to a clean house and a hot dinner?”

“Yeah,” he said, amazed she'd understood, as though there was nothing obscene about it.

A year after her divorce, when the marital assets had been
divided and Ettie was marking time in a city flat until she figured out what she wanted to do next, she'd stumbled upon a tiny advert in the back of her local paper: “For Rent: Cosy house in picturesque offshore location.” She didn't fully understand the concept of offshore but it sounded exotic. When she called the agent and learned it meant living on an island, she packed her bags – and her paints – and rocked up at Cook's Basin, ready for a new start in life.

She'd been so young and full of dreams. First, she planned to ditch her old
good wife
persona and morph into a wild young hippie in streaming rainbow-coloured clothes, with hair down to her waist, who only wore shoes when she travelled to town. Second, she'd sit in her Island eyrie and paint inspired pictures that would be snapped up by art collectors around the world and eventually lead to wealth and fame. Or a decent living at least. Well, she got the hippie part down pat, anyway.

God, was it really
thirty
years ago now? She reaches for her glass. It's empty.

Damp creeps through her pyjamas, her backside begins to ache with cold. One more glass to warm up before going to bed, she thinks.

The moon breaks through the clouds at the same moment that she realises it is very late and she is seriously drunk. Old and drunk. Does it get much uglier? She leans on the rail and stares into darkness. Moonlight bounces off treetops. Way down in the bay, yachts hang still and silent on their moorings. The night air has turned sweet. Stars are out. It is utterly beautiful.

Sam follows the rowboat to a jetty next to Triangle Wharf on Cutter Island where it's been tied so close to shore it will be stranded at low tide. So it's a blow-in, he thinks, knowing that no self-respecting local would risk a rock through the hull of such a sweet little timber boat.

He swings away from shore. The clouds have scurried off. The sky is clear and laced with stars. Silver light plays on the water like tinsel. It feels as if the open waterway belongs to him alone and the corners of his mouth lift in a smile of contentment. Give him the sea every time, he thinks, where there are no boundaries to hold a man back.

The less he has to do with terra firma, the better. More like
terreur fermé
(according to the beautiful Frenchwoman with liquid brown eyes who'd worked on his accent for two years). The terror of being closed in, yeah. It said it all. When his feet hit the ground, he feels nailed in place, like some funny bugger has poured cement in his workboots.

Ten minutes later, he nuzzles the
Mary Kay
into the seawall in Oyster Bay with water under the hull to spare. Despite the time – just after 3 a.m. – the house is ablaze with lights. He toys with the idea of knocking on the door to introduce himself and maybe bot a cup of coffee. What's her name again? He fumbles on the dash, searching for the order form.
Kate Jackson
. He reconsiders. If she's heard the joint's rumoured to have a ghost, knocking on her door in the witching hour might scare her rigid.

Jeez. He'll never understand why anyone would want to buy a mouldy old pile of crumbling sandstone in the shadow of a dank escarpment. One season of monsoon rain like they had ten years ago and the whole shebang could quietly slip
down the hill into the bay. If she'd bothered to ask around, any local would have explained the downside of
cheap
when it was applied to
waterfront
. Must be a dreamer, he decides, feeling a swell of pity for what lies ahead of her. More money than brains.

The Briny Café hovers over the water at the end of a yellow streak of sand, a ramshackle building made from timber planks weathered to silver by the sun, sea and wind. It stands resolute – the beating heart of Cook's Basin – despite a long list of culinary inconsistencies and a slightly cartoonish lean towards the east, brought on by the annual hammering of the icy August westerlies.

On the deck, after a breakfast that is memorable for all the wrong reasons, Sam Scully pays for a newspaper at the cluttered front counter and strides into the Square looking for company. He has four hours to kill before the next high tide when he's due to transport six tonnes of soil to a garden project in Kingfish Bay. The new owner, a retired chef, has straightened and strengthened the old 1950s holiday house without losing its character (although if he wanted a posh garden, he's headed for heartbreak – the wallabies always win).

Sam sees the water taxi tied up at the end of the wharf and looks around for its driver Fast Freddy. Despite his racy moniker, Sam finds that spending time with Freddy is like relaxing in a pool of cool water on a sweltering day.

He spots him nursing a coffee at a picnic table under a couple of stringy shade trees and makes his way towards him through clutches of lily-white tourists, out frolicking on the first warm day of the season. Despite the sunshine, Freddy is still rugged up in his night-shift clobber – a warm red fleece, blue trackie daks and lambskin boots that come up to his knees.

“Business slow?” Sam asks, brushing a few crumbs off the bench and taking a pew beside him.

Fast Freddy shakes his head. “Just havin' a breather before going home for a zizz. I've got to square up for a twelve-hour shift later this afternoon.”

“Weekend. Mugs everywhere.”

“Yeah. Nothing changes …”

“My imagination, Freddy, or are there more about than usual?”

“A few ning-nongs showing off on the water. Not enough to spoil a beautiful day.”

“Never seen you lose your temper. Not once.”

Freddy shrugs. “No point. Shouting never achieves anything. Compassion takes you a lot further.”

“You're a good man, Freddy.”

Freddy swills the last of his coffee. “Filthy brew,” he pronounces through puckered lips, squeezing the paper cup into a ball.

“That bloke who's moved next to Triangle, he's got some suss late-night habits. I reckon he's worth keeping an eye on when you're out and about.”

Freddy nods and points towards Sam's newspaper. “Reckon I could read my stars before I take off?”

Sam looks confused at first. “Oh mate. Gotcha.” He flicks
to the back pages, rips out the astrology column. “This stuff really tell you what's ahead?”

“Good a guess as any.” And with a slightly bow-legged hobble, Freddy heads towards his apple-green water taxi with its powerful 150-horsepower engine, turquoise bimini, lime padded seats and bright pink carpet. Colour, Freddy explains to every astonished first-time passenger, lifts the spirits, you see.

Running thick fingers through his salt-stiff hair Sam looks around for someone else to entertain him. A group of dishevelled Islanders with south-facing houses sits in the sunniest corner of the Square, soaking in the warmth. They're in tight conversation, eating hot chips out of a bucket with a look of guilty pleasure on their pale, mildly hungover faces.

The
Seagull
– a scarred old timber ferry with a turned up snout – swings into the wharf, her shabby blue and red hull cutting through the green water. The magnificently raj rear deck is solidly packed with Saturday morning memsahibs, kids carrying cricket bats, and a few tail-wagging mutts travelling free as usual. The two Misses Skettle, twins who were born and bred offshore more than eighty-five years ago, alight last. Both have a single strand of pearls hanging to the exact level of their second buttons and, thrown over their narrow shoulders, sit purple cardigans that tone with their mauve hair. They pound down the gangway chirruping, and blow Sam a kiss like he's still five years old and hanging behind his mother's skirt. For old girls, he thinks fondly, they move like pink and purple rockets.

Sam checks his watch, pats his pocket, searching for his tobacco. Jeez. A month away from turning forty and his
memory is on the blink already. Once and for all, mate, he tells himself emphatically, you have given up the freaking fags!

He feels a sudden pinch in his gut, then another that blossoms into a full-on cramp. He stomps inside the café, aiming to launch an enquiry into the freshness of the bacon. But pulls up short. A woman in blue jeans with straight black hair and a pancake-flat backside beats him to the counter. She puts her shoulder bag between sweets, peanuts, chocolates, cans of baked beans and some furry and green-tinted loaves of bread, all flung haphazardly like the flotsam and jetsam of a shipwreck. He watches her grab a newspaper and slip it under a paddle-pop arm, like she's in a city café where they're part of the furnishings. He winces and waits for Bertie, the cantankerous owner of The Briny Café, to erupt.

“Paper's not free, luv. Two-fifty on a Saturday unless you're planning to pinch it. Which I wouldn't advise,” Bertie says in a killer voice. The old man stares at her boldly with dark brown eyes out of a bald, acorn head.

“Sorry,” she says, without flinching. She orders a coffee and Bertie's famous egg and bacon roll. Sam toys with the idea of warning her off it but gets distracted when he notices the weird tinge on Bertie's usually tanned face. He's looking every one of his seventy-odd years today, he thinks. Haggard, yellower than the
Mary Kay
.

“Car smash or barbecue, luv?” Bertie asks.

The woman looks blank.

“
Sauce
, luv, what kind of
sauce
do you want?”

“Ah. Barbecue. Thanks.” She turns away.

“Pay up front, luv. That's how we do it here. Like it or leave it.”

“Oh right.” There's a harder edge in her tone now.

Bertie takes her money, hands over the change then leans against the counter, bare arms crossed, smirking. The breastplate of his apron is flecked with small brown stains. His Beatles T-shirt and flared jeans are straight out of the seventies. He waits until she's almost through the door to the back deck: “We'll call your number, luv, when it's ready. Then you collect it at the counter.”

Sam watches her search her receipt for a number, the expression on her face a mixture of embarrassment and anger.

“How about
one
, luv. You can remember that, can't you?”

“Yeah. Should be able to.” Her tone is frigid. “Friendly place, this. Whatever happened to the good ol' days?” The flywire door slams behind her. It almost falls off its rusty hinges.

“Jeez, Bertie,” Sam says when she's out of earshot. “Bit rough, weren't you?”

“My café, my rules. Best everyone knows upfront. What can I get you?”

“Nothing, mate. Just wanted to let you know I feel a bit off after me brekky. You might want to ram your nose up against the bacon.”

“First sign of warm weather, everyone goes down with a tummy wog and blames me,” Bertie says, unfussed.

“I'm not bein' critical, mate. Just wanted to let you know. And while I'm here, I'll have a bag of your hot chips. Best chips on the foreshore.”

Bertie harrumphs. “Hold back the praise, Sam. Too much and I'm liable to keel over.” His voice skids to a wheeze.

“Keep your shirt on. I'm not talkin' about your dodgy burgers, mate. Just the chips.”

“Yeah. Go easy, why don't you? Wouldn't want to give a fella a swelled head after only forty years of flippin' the same old meat patties, day in, day out.”

“You're a legend, Bertie. Everyone knows it.”

“More faith in cash than compliments, Sam. Four bucks. On the nose. No mate's rates. Quickest way to go broke.”

Sam scoffs his chips in the Square to avoid the extra twenty per cent loading Bertie adds for the privilege of dining amongst the shambles of broken tables and chairs on the back deck. In theory, the mark-up is to cover the cost of service, china and silverware but if those frills were ever there, they disappeared from the café long ago. Every order, no matter where it's consumed, comes wrapped in a white paper bag with grease leaking through the packaging like rising damp.

The Briny, an eccentric mishmash of decks, docks, jetties, storefront and attic and perched on pylons like an addled crab, has withstood fierce winter storms, raging summer bushfires and twice a modest tsunami. But Sam wasn't sure how much longer it could survive Bertie's increasingly risky food.

He sees Bertie's latest victim exit the fusty debris of The Briny Café with a muttered and insincere “Thanks” thrown over her shoulder. Bertie appears in the doorway, his glistening skull tilted in bored acknowledgement. She wanders to the end of the wharf where Chris, the ferry driver, a sun-raddled old fella with short legs and knuckles the size of doorknobs, is selling tickets. She buys one and steps aboard. A day-tripper, Sam thinks. Bertie probably hasn't done himself out of any long-term business then.

A seagull swoops on his bucket of chips and Sam bats it away with his newspaper. The bird flies off and lands neatly
on a pylon where it chucks him a gimlet-eyed look. Always scavenging and searching for the easy way out, he thinks, like that clueless bastard in the rowboat last night. A small place like Cook's Basin, you try anything seriously shonky and pretty soon the wrath of the community comes crashing down on your head. He aims his parcel of rubbish at the bin. Curses when he misses by a mile.

 

On the other side of the bay, Ettie shuts her eyes against the daylight and gives sleep one more shot, counting an imaginary chorus-line of glittering fairies dancing in a garden of red-spotted mushrooms. Well, it worked when she was five years old. She gives up and stumbles into the bathroom. Under the fluorescent light, the face in the mirror looks hammered. As old as she feels. Two drinks max in future, she tells herself, knowing even as she says it that it's pointless. By the bottom of the second glass, all bets are off.

She crawls back into bed and hoists the sheet around her neck. The dull thud of a migraine takes hold of the back of her head and needles its way forward to a point behind each eyeball. A trickle of moisture leaks from under an eyelid that she hopes is the result of pain and not self-pity. She decides to delay visiting the new resident in Oyster Bay until tomorrow. It will give the rich spaghetti sauce she's planning to cook time for the flavours to develop. She allows herself to believe it's the truth.

By early afternoon, her hangover lifted, Ettie struggles out of bed to prepare the welcome feast, which is, in reality, an excuse to thoroughly check out the newcomer. Offshore life
is a constant test of spirit and endurance, and locals are loath to waste time explaining tides, tinnies and tank water to residents who are likely to faint at a single tick bite or the sight of a python sleeping off a rat dinner on the verandah. One of her many (admittedly self-appointed) roles is to suss out whether newcomers are stayers or bolters, wusses or warriors.

As long as the woman doesn't turn out to be a nutter, she thinks, browning the mince in small batches over very high heat. Nutters suck you dry with no return. She tips a decent slug of a rough red into the pot and lets it reduce to a syrup before adding the homemade tomato pureé she bottles by the vat when tomatoes are at their peak. Leaning over the stove, her eyes closed, she sniffs the onions to be sure the bitterness has been cooked off and gets a strong whiff of the carrots and celery she's added to give the sauce complexity. All good. She brings the mixture to the boil, bangs on a lid and leaves it to murmur for at least three hours in her favourite old cast-iron pot that's as red as the sauce. She drinks three glasses of water, makes a pot of tea, takes two aspirin for her hangover. Then starts on the very rich and decidedly wicked chocolate cake, feeling much cheerier.

Outside the temperature is rising, the sun blazing, the sea glittering. The tangy smell of sausages cooking on barbecues drifts on the air. Thin spirals of smoke wind upwards. The good people of Cook's Basin are coming alive after their winter hibernation.