The Briny Café (8 page)

No, he says firmly, she has not been shamed into leaving. She is on her way to America – New York, if he remembers correctly – to interview somebody rich and famous. No, she didn't mention a name. Yes, she does have a split lip but no other injuries as far as he could see. What did they talk about? Well, he asked if she would mind if he detoured slightly so he could knock on Artie's hull and he was pleased when she agreed, even though she was rushing to catch an international flight. It showed good instincts. Although he adds, digressing in his usual way, he may have checked on Artie too early in the morning because he was greeted with an angry roar. He thought he'd be thrilled he was going to enjoy more of the day than usual since he'd roused him at the crack 'a, but well, everyone's built differently, he supposes. As long as there's kindness, compassion and patience in the world … He did,
he admits, indulge in some similar philosophising to Kate about his long night shifts under a full winter moon, which she seemed to find interesting.

He continues. As everyone knows, he says, he mostly keeps his thoughts to himself. But during the taxi ride, without quite understanding the impulse, he'd found himself telling Kate about the magic of being awake while most folks were tucked in their cosy beds. About how the purity of the stars and the moon made him feel big and small at the same time. How when he was overcome by the vast clarity of the night sky, he sometimes forgot to breathe for a moment or two.

He recounts, then, that she asked him what were the most important skills to have on the water:
Good eyes, attention to detail – such as the weather and the level of your petrol tank (ha, ha) – patience and the ability to make quick decisions.
Same as life, when you think about it. She gave him a blaster of a smile that lit up eyes the colour of the deep blue-green ocean and as far as he's concerned, she's made a friend for life. She paid him with a decent tip that was neither too little nor too much, which means she understands the value of money but is not, as a fresh new wave of rumours suggest, a cheapskate. Then she shook his hand and thanked him sincerely for his advice.

If he is any judge of character – and anyone who spends as much time dealing with the general public as he does, knows a few things about human behaviour – Kate Jackson is a quick learner. He told her he'd be waiting for her return with open arms and he swears he saw a tear in her eye.

“Ettie!” Big Julie pokes her head out of the tangled plastic strips and waves a tea towel above her head like a lariat. “Bertie's been waiting for you. How about a coffee? On the house.”

It must be something big, Ettie thinks. Bertie's never given away so much as a paper napkin without an argument.

“What's up?” she asks, a smile firmly in place.

Big Julie waves her inside the café. “Bertie wants to have a chat. He's on the deck. Says if you'd prefer a beer, he'll spring for that instead.”

“Everything alright, Julie?”

“Up to a point. Yeah, that about says it. Just get out there, will you? It's almost closing time and he's a bit buggered after a long afternoon of appointments – of the kind none of us wishes to have.”

Ettie pushes open the squealing wire door.

Bertie, haloed in the last gauzy light of day, is sitting at a table in the corner, looking out to sea. He wears a sports jacket with brass buttons over a checked shirt and his khaki trousers are sharply creased, his shoes well-polished leather lace-ups. If he'd had a hat covering his glistening head, she
would never have recognised him. She's about to make a glib remark but he turns towards her and gives her a look that knocks the wind out of her.

He's dying, she realises in an instant. Nothing else would shift the cynical smirk that was as much a part of Bertie as his grubby apron, his Beatles T-shirts and his stained white sneakers.

She pulls out a chair and joins him at the wobbly table.

“How much money have you got in the bank, luv?” he asks.

The question is so out of the blue Ettie hesitates, trying to figure out where he's coming from. “I'm good for a loan, Bertie, if that's what you're after,” she says eventually. Because when a man is dying he shouldn't have to worry about money. “Name the figure and if I've got it it's yours for as long as you need it.”

To her horror, a tear trickles down the old man's yellow-stained cheek. He pulls a handkerchief out of his pocket and mops his face with feigned casualness, like he's dealing with a sudden sweat.

“You'd do that for a mean old bastard like me, would ya? No guarantees or nothin'?”

She nods, not entirely sure she hasn't lost her mind – and her nest egg – in one dangerously rash moment.

Bertie sighs. “No need for a loan, luv, but I'll take your money – in return for The Briny. It's yours, lock, stock and barrel if you want it. Just so you know, it's not a freehold. You'd been buying twelve years left on a twenty-five-year lease. What happens after that is up to you.” He makes a job of folding his hanky and shoving it back in his pocket, struggling to get his breath. “You're sittin' there stiller than a
stunned mullet. And I'm short of time in more ways than one. What's your answer, girl?”

He grins to soften the words and Ettie bursts into tears.

Big Julie races outside with a glass of wine. “Here, love, get this into you. I'm already three ahead and I don't drink.” She bends to kiss Bertie's cheek in the first public show of affection Ettie has ever seen between them, pats his smooth head. Flies off again.

“I have some money, Bertie, but not nearly enough,” Ettie manages at last. “So thank you, my friend, but you'll do better by selling the business on the open market.” She swallows hard, pressing a wild surge of hopes and dreams back into a tight little box and slamming the lid.

“It's yours, luv. For whatever you can afford. And that's the end of it. Julie, darlin',” he calls on the back of a dry cough, “bring the paperwork. Then let's go home. Ettie, you start work tomorrow.”

 

For a long time, Ettie sits in the growing dark, afraid that if she moves she'll wake up and find it was all a mad fantasy. Then she thinks of Bertie. How must it feel to look death in the face? To know that in a single, half-hour appointment with a specialist you've never met before, the door to the future has been slammed in your face? Forty years of The Briny relegated to history by a few horror-filled words.

She picks up the key sitting on top of the documents Bertie has left lying on the table and goes inside to turn off the lights. Her lights. She slides home the bolt on the door and snaps the padlock. Her padlock. Her café. Thank you, Bertie,
she thinks, for trusting me with The Briny. I will make you proud. She listens to lazy waves splash against the seawall, the distant cries of gulls. For her, it's the equivalent of rocks singing.

Her mood suddenly swings from euphoria to terror. She looks back at her track record in business which, even with a positive spin, is pretty lousy. Realistically, The Briny Café is a rat-infested, leaning hole, with gaps in the floorboards so wide you can see diesel scum making rainbows on the water underneath. Get rid of the grease and dirt holding it together and the first big blow could send it off in a cloud stinking of deep-fried onions and burnt coffee. What was she thinking of, taking this on? She wants to cry. She wants the whole great burden of thirty years of fending for herself lifted off her shoulders. She wants …

She sniffs, using her sleeve as a hanky. This is her last shot at financial independence in her old age. She straightens her shoulders and throws caution to the wind. All or nothing, she thinks, but aware that no matter how hard she works, she won't be able to do it alone. She needs a partner who understands money and how to make a profit. Two key skills that for her, she is painfully aware, are as hard as learning Russian.

Out of the gloom, the long-lost mutt crawls towards her with a whimper and a beaten look in his sad brown eyes. “Still here? Where do you live, little doggie?” she asks, scratching the white blaze on his chest. His ratty tail wags, his face lights up. He leans his barrel body against her leg and plants his backside firmly on her foot so she can't get away. She sighs. He's been hanging out in the Square for too long to be a dog on the loose from a nearby backyard.
This is a dog that doesn't have a home. A café can't really keep a mutt but what's a barge without one? She dials Sam's mobile.

 

Ettie and Sam sit side by side on a bench in the darkness of the Square while Ettie explains that Bertie is dying and she is the new proprietor of The Briny Café.

“Poor bastard, but letting you take over is the right decision,” he says.

She lays a hand on his knee and gently tells him that she's thrilled but she'd hand it back in a flash if it meant Bertie could see out the lease in robust health. The community, she adds, must be ready to help him whenever it can.

“It's a good buy, love, you've made a killing. It'll be a gold-mine one day. Set you up for life.”

“You really think so?” she asks.

“Yeah. No doubt. Might look like a dump, but it's
our
offshore dump. That shambolic little seaside shanty holds nearly two hundred years of the spirit of the Spit. You can't buy that in a hardware shop. You're starting from the bottom. There's only one way from there and it's up.”

“You're a good friend, Sam.” She pats his shoulder, rests her head against the warmth of his chest for a moment. “Yeah, it's all good, isn't it?”

He puts an arm around her, draws her closer, buries his face in her hair.

He's never been handsome, she thinks, not even when he had young skin and an athlete's body. His face is too flat and square. His jaw overbearing. The years have softened the jaw
but he's broader now. Blocky. His skin roughened by salt, sun and the razor-sharp winter southerlies. Not everyone's idea of attractive, but being older and more worn-in actually suits him. He has an aura. Rock-solid. Ettie has always preferred that to conventional good looks.

In her experience, good-looking men were trouble, although she's always had a soft spot for the drifters who float in on the tide to scrape a living from cleaning the salt-crust off windows or cunjies from the bottoms of boats. Generous blokes, mostly, who'd pass you their last cold beer if you were hot and thirsty. Not like the penny-pinching tycoons you read about in the business pages that breezed in for a week or two and then skived off without paying their mooring fees or the price of their anti-fouls. She'd take a drifter over a tycoon any day.

They are both silent for a while. It's long past the last ferry run and the Square is almost deserted. One or two people go past without glancing their way. They jump into tinnies tied to the seawall and head off, filling the night air with noise and exhaust.

Ettie says: “I'm not going to be able to run the place on my own. I'll burn out within the year. I need a partner. Any ideas?”

Sam is silent for a very long time. “Are you asking if I'd like to come on board?” he says, eventually.

Ettie is so surprised by his response she laughs for the first time that day.

“Can't see you filling bite-size cupcakes with cream, love, if you don't mind me saying so.” She holds up his huge hands, grazed on the knuckles, grease under the nails.

“There are people,” he responds, haughtily, “no need to
name names, who think my sausage rolls and garlic mashed potatoes are world-class.”

“One day shut inside the café and you'd be a basket case, but thanks for offering. I was wondering, though, about Kate …”

“Kate!”

“Yeah.”

“Are you off your rocker, mate? I thought you said she's stretched to the limit to make toast. And she has a top job in town, doesn't she?” Sam gets to his feet and begins pacing up and down. The mutt follows in his wake with the same rolling gait. “She's not your problem, Ettie. She's a big girl who can take care of herself.” He stops in front of her. The mutt headbutts into his heels. “Tell me you're joking, Ettie, 'cause taking on a novice when it's a question of do or die is like having a death wish.”

“Maybe,” she says, unable to meet his eyes. “But she understands the value of money. I watched her brew a cup of tea once, too. She did it beautifully, with respect and reverence, like it was a ceremony. There's a foodie spark in her. Deep, and lying in wait.”

“Promise me, Ettie, no more bloody lame ducks.”

She stands up, without answering. “One other thing …”

“I'm almost too frightened to ask.”

“Every barge should have a dog and right now this one has nowhere else to call home.” She gathers the mutt in her arms and holds him out. Sam does a quick spin.

“Jeez,” is the best he can manage.

Sam guides Ettie safely along the seawall to the half-sunk pontoon at the back of the café. They step on together and it immediately groans and belches under their weight. One big wake or a cracker of a storm, he thinks, will send it straight to the bottom of the bay. He bends to untie the ropes of her tinny as she finds her place next to the tiller.

“If Frankie's working late at the boatshed, I'll ask him about that spare pontoon hanging off his jetty and doing nothing useful,” Sam says. “He might want to store it here until he finds a buyer. I can see a few tables on it, or a couple of deckchairs where customers can hang their toes in the water while they guzzle the crispest fish and chips on the coast.”

She nods because she can't speak, squeezes and twists the throttle into neutral, pulls the engine cord.

Sam gives the boat a gentle shove with his foot and she guns off. The tinny rears, nose pointed to the sky, then settles on the plane. Very soon it's no bigger than a wash tub in the dark.

 

Later that night, Sam decides to do his own detailed research into the Weasel's highly suspect goings-on at the house near Triangle Wharf. The whole community is aware the bloke is dealing drugs and figures adults make their own choices. But according to the Three Js, an increasing number of kids are arriving home with sloppy grins and glassy eyes, lying about what they've been up to. Sam wants to see the evidence.

He sets off in the
Mary Kay
with a plan to doss down for the night in his wheelhouse. He intends to record the number of visitors, the time of the visits and the physical state in
which those visitors depart. Cold hard facts are the first step in any battle plan. A good community weeds out its rotten wood quickly and cleanly. Calling the cops just means waiting for the slow wheels of justice to turn, which could be a costly mistake.

By ten o'clock, he is firmly anchored in place. It is a perfect night for a stake-out. Cool, calm, and bright with moonlight. He yanks off his workboots, leaving on his thick woollen socks, and puts his feet up to wait. He props a pillow behind his head. Comfy as. Removes a book from his neatly packed picnic basket, clips on a small reading torch and opens to page one of what he's been told is a gut-wrenching memoir about storms and shipwrecks at sea. The mutt lies on his blanket on the deck, quietly snoring.

After a short time, the smell of warm sausage rolls rising from the basket breaks Sam's concentration. They are underrated in the modern world, in his opinion. Made with fresh eggs, onions, parsley and a bit of pork mince mixed in with the sausage meat, they turn into a feast. It has to be puff pastry, too. The buttery sort that smells so good his dad used to reckon it enticed the fish when you were picnicking out in your boat with a rod over the side. They were fun days, he thinks, remembering kerosene lanterns, ice deliveries and wood-fired stoves. Back then, the ferry transported fresh bread, milk and newspapers to the strapped-for-cash adventurers living in roughly cobbled together houses or boatsheds perilously sited along the broken shores. For the women left home alone by their working husbands, the ferry's arrival was as giddily anticipated as a party, their way of touching base with the world beyond their wild bush
backyards and the long, skinny arms of their listing jetties. A break from washing nappies in a banged up metal bucket of tea-coloured tank water heated on a single gas jet.